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Strangled Time
Chapter Eight
That next morning was colder than the others had been. Kagome lay tucked within the warmth of her bedroll long after the bright of the sun's light had interrupted her dreamless sleep, staring out into the forest and dreading the thought of leaving her cocoon. The heat of her breath formed little clouds in the air and the ground was damp with dew, but thankfully it wasn't close enough to winter for frost. She wasn't stocked with snow gear yet and the image of wearing her summer yukatas in the freezing cold made her shiver.
With a stretch that would have put her cat to shame and a grumbled yawn, Kagome reluctantly pulled herself from her comfort to tackle the day. The fire behind her had gone out at some point in the night and not even embers were left in the ashy pit.
She could feel the demon's gaze following her as she dug around in her pack and began to fight with a pack of matches to get a flame started again so that they had something to cook breakfast on. He watched her pile some of the eggs she had bought the day before in a small pot and fill it with water from her kettle. Those molten gold eyes never left her even as she returned to her yellow bag for clean clothing to change into.
Finally the priestess spun and pinned him with a look. "What!"
Togashimaru chuckled, a deep rumbling noise that caught her off guard. "Good morning."
Kagome flushed, embarrassed by her own rudeness. "Good morning." She replied and raked her hand through her tangled hair. Their conversation from the night before was still heavy in her thoughts and she didn't exactly know what to say to him. Should she tell him that the woman he loved might still be living her life just a few villages away?
How would a being that aged so slowly react to the shock of seeing her mortal body fifteen years older than she had been when he had fallen in love with her?
Would his feelings remain the same?
Could they go back to the way things were before?
Shaking her head, the priestess planted a smile on her lips before setting aside the clothes to grab her medical supplies so that she could check on his wounds. "How did you sleep?"
"I did not." He responded, shifting where he sat against the lip of the well. Before Kagome could scold him for not getting the rest he required, he continued. "The thoughts in my head would not cease. Each time I closed my eyes, a new question would form."
Dew drops had collected along his arms in the night, his hair stuck with a dampness to his cheek. His eyes looked so tired.
The smile fell gradually from Kagome's mouth.
"I know how that can be." She said after kneeling beside him. She used a hand towel to pat the moisture from his skin. "Try to rest today if you can. Don't push yourself."
His hand caught her wrist as she brushed the silver strands of hair from his face with her cloth, long fingers nearly encompassed half the length of her forearm. His claws, sharp and deadly, swept against her delicate skin without so much as a scratch. "May I ask you this?"
Breath caught in her throat.
"Ask me what?"
"Two hundred years from now, in the time that you call the past." He began, his quiet baritone carried loudly in the crisp morning silence. "Do you happen to know what became of my sons? Of Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha."
She froze.
"Wait." Kagome pulled back with a start, breaking from the spell. He let her go without argument. "No. No, you should only have one son right now." The words tumbled out before she could restrain them. "You died the night Inuyasha was born. You shouldn't even know about him."
The two stared at each other, eyes wide with shock at her admission.
"I certainly would have died then, if not for you."
…
'So that's where I am in the timeline, huh?' Kagome mused as she walked aimlessly from stall to stall in the village marketplace, her body moving on auto-pilot.
It all made sense, all of the puzzles fit together nicely.
The crazed demon that Saburo had told her about that had attacked the castle, bringing about the deaths of countless men, had been Togashimaru. The Lady of the castle, the target of the demon's raid, had been Lady Izayoi. Her betrothed, Takemaru of Setsuna, driven mad by jealousy. But she had already guessed that much.
What she hadn't factored in was Inuyasha.
The half demon baby wasn't mentioned in Saburo's tales. For all Kagome had known, Togashimaru and Izayoi had parted childless, only to get back together in this new time, have their child and relive a similar fated event that would result in the loss of the demon General's life. The Lady was still fairly young, after all. There was still time.
But no, Inuyasha had already been born.
Inuyasha was fifteen years old.
And Kagome had totally screwed up the timeline because she had the stupid bad habit of helping every single being, man or beast, that happened to cross her path! She resurrected a dead man! A nation-changingly powerful dead man!
What did that mean for her own time? What did that mean for her past?
"Excuse me."
What did that mean for Inuyasha?
"Miss?"
The priestess clenched the textile wares in her hands, ignoring the frantic merchant behind the stall trying to get her attention to keep her from ruining his merchandise.
She just had to go and open her gigantic mouth about Inuyasha! As if she hadn't made a big enough mess as it was! She was so angry with herself! What was she even going to say to Togashimaru when she went back up the hill? Sorry I freaked out and ran into the village, let's just forget that conversation even happened!
Yeah. Right.
Just as her vision began to blur, a familiar voice pulled her from her inner turmoil.
"Miss Kagome?"
He placed his heavy hand over hers, darkened tan and marked with callouses and scars. Her grip on the merchant's precious fabrics loosened.
"Saburo." She looked up at him, relief like a warm breeze flowed through her.
The Smith glanced over his shoulder to a slightly younger man not yet out of his teens with the same sharp jaw and equally tanned skin. The resemblance was so strong, there was no doubt that they were closely related. Only, where Saburo had long hair that fell the length of his back, the younger's hair was cut close to his ears and looked as if it hadn't seen a comb in weeks.
"Shiro, you head on back and mind the forge. I'll be 'round in a bit."
Shiro appraised her for a long minute before he nodded, took the steel ingots his brother was carrying, stepped around them and continued walking down the street in the direction of the workshop.
"Don't mind him." The burly young man said with a laugh. "He's a quiet one. Ain't never spoken to a woman before that wasn't our mother." When she didn't smile at that Saburo gently pulled away his hand to scratch at the untidy scruff on his chin.
"You wanna talk about whats eatin' ya?" He offered awkwardly. "I know a place."
…
"So basically," Kagome wrapped up as she picked a slice of pickled radish from one of her side dishes. "I know things about that guy I'm taking care of that he doesn't know, and telling him could really mess things up for a lot of people. But now he knows I know, so I don't know what I'm going to do if he starts asking questions."
She'd left out the two major components to her story: demons and time travel. Yet somehow that made it sound even more complicated than it actually was, and maybe a bit seedier too. Kagome was grateful that the restaurant he'd taken her to had private booths so that strangers weren't able to overhear her terrible explanation.
Okay, so it was more of a pub than a restaurant. But the food was still pretty good.
Saburo stared at her from across the low table, eyebrows knitted together and arm propped to hold his chin. His other draped over his knee, chopsticks forgotten in his hand. The moment they'd entered the eatery he'd tied his hair back, but every now and again he would still move to push strands behind his ear that weren't there.
His expression kept shifting between uncertainty and concern.
"Are you... in some sort of political conspiracy?"
Kagome almost choked on her radish. "No way! Nothing like that!" She waved away the preposterous idea. But then she needed to come up with another explanation before he could ask if it was gang related, too. "It's more of a priestess... sight of... destiny, type of thing?"
Well, that sounded lame.
Yet somehow, the blacksmith accepted that answer with ease. The creases left his face and he let out a sign of relief as he rubbed at the nape of his neck.
"Well, if it's destiny, why are you worried?" He asked.
"Huh?"
Saburo straightened his posture when he had her full attention. "Destiny can't be changed no matter what you do, right? That's what makes it destiny. So what if he knows? It shouldn't screw anything up unless it's meant to." He made it sound so easy. His logic brushed away her concerns like they were made of lint. "Besides, keeping secrets like that can only hurt the both of you."
Kagome thought back to her book of time travel theories, to the highlighted predestination paradox. It suited her other trips perfectly. There wasn't any reason for it not to fit for this time too. Then that meant that all of this was meant to happen. It was already predetermined. What she did in that further past wouldn't change the future, instead it would create the future she knew.
It was a conclusion she'd come to once before, but shied away from.
"You're right." The priestess' shoulders slumped.
That would mean that it really didn't matter what she told Togashimaru. Because, in the end, he was still going to die.
At the end of it all, what it really came down to, was whether or not she was willing to accept that.
Kagome pushed away her lunch set, her appetite lost.
...
Neither she nor her demon companion spoke much after she returned to their makeshift camp among the ruins. The noonday sun came and went as they carried on with their normal daily routine. Kagome rebound his wound and went out in search of firewood. Togashimaru kept a low profile as he recuperated his stamina, he even managed a few short hours of sleep when he wasn't looking through the texts and notebooks that Kagome had let him borrow.
It wasn't until after she had finished cleaning away the scraps of their dinner that she gave in.
If he was going to be a casualty of fate, then dammnit she was going to make sure he was satisfied before he left.
Whenever that would be.
Togashimaru watched with a raised eyebrow as the priestess paced like a dog around where he was seated before finally settling on the space to his left. Instead of facing the same direction, Kagome sat the opposite. She stretched her arms above her head with a satisfying pop of her joints and let herself fall back into the tall wild grasses that had completely taken over the rotten foundation of the building where Inuyasha had been born.
The wind was chilly, but not nearly as bad as it had been that morning. It pushed the grass and weeds in hypnotic waves, and when it blew hard enough the seed stalks bent to tickle her forehead and nose with itchy kisses.
A rumbled hum emanated from the man beside her.
"Are you comfortable?" He asked, amused.
"Not really, my back is still pretty bruised from the other day." She answered truthfully.
"Then why lay upon the ground when you have a traveler's bed?"
"Because I'm storytelling." She scolded him. "Now shush, before I change my mind."
He remained quiet, only shifting to settle into a more relaxed position. Once she was satisfied, Kagome reached up to the sky, as if she could grab hold of the passing night clouds and pull them away from the galaxies hiding beyond. The full moon kindly made up for the lack of stars.
"Sometimes at night, when we're not fighting, Inuyasha will take me up to the rooftops so we can watch the stars together. He'll tell me how small the sky makes him feel. When we first met, he wouldn't confide in me at all. He was so angry and withdrawn. He isn't like that anymore. He's grown so much in the few years I've known him. Sure, he can be a real pain in my neck sometimes, and he's always rushing us, and he can be unbearably stubborn. But he's got a kindness in him. Alongside our friends, both human and demon and everything in between, he fights for justice."
Kagome tucked her arms behind her head at glanced up at the father of her best friend. Togashimaru had closed his eyes, his chin tilted skyward as he bathed in the blue light of the moon, highlighting the velvet blue markings on his cheeks.
They were the same, those stripes.
Except, they only ever appeared on Inuyasha when his demon blood overpowered him. They were only ever harsh and jagged with bloodlust. Never so smooth and serene.
Togashimaru cracked a glowing ember eye to peer at her when she stopped talking.
Kagome smiled at him and continued.
"When I first met Inuyasha he was sealed to a tree by a sacred arrow. He's only a little taller than me, with powder white hair that's thick and frizzy—not silky like yours and Sesshoumaru's—and he's got these adorable puppy dog ears that give away his emotions way more often than he realizes..."
He listened as she talked for hours about her friends and their adventures, about the people and places they've seen, the battles they've fought. She talked about Inuyasha and his hard won accomplishments. She talked about Sesshoumaru and they discussed his peculiar attachment to the human child that now accompanied him.
When he laughed, hearty and unrestrained, as she told him about the first time they met Koga and his declarations of love, Kagome knew she'd made the right decision to tell him about his sons' future.
Maybe she would get the courage to tell him about Izayoi, too.
But that was better left for another day.
End Chapter
(A/N – Guess who just wrote twelve pages of outlining notes for this story? It's only been, what, five years? Thank you to all of you who've reviewed recently and are still reading this story! You've really lit my flame!)