Disclaimer: I do not own any of the

Main characters within this

Fabrication Their rightful owner

is Rumiko Takahashi. Please support

The official work.

Strangled Time

Chapter 22

There were plenty of really bad things that you didn't want to be in the feudal era: being a woman in a recently conquered village, an elderly person in the dead of the coldest winter, or a frail half demon child on the run from a monster ten times your cunning and strength. Being sick easily made the top five of that list. When you were sick in the feudal era, far displaced from modern medical technology, the only things you could really do were get some rest and pray for the best. If you overexerted yourself, you ran the risk of dying from arbitrary—not to mention stupid—things like splinters or wet feet.

For the most part, Kagome had a strong constitution. She could probably thank her futuristic vaccines and evolved virus immunities for that. Among her usual party members it was actually Miroku who got sick the most. He was on the more delicate side and often forgot that, despite his unusual strengths and speed, he was still only human.

It was easier when it was someone else. When a friend is sick, you can focus your full attention on helping them recover. But when you are the sick one, without anything to occupy your time, you become a victim of your own thoughts. Even without being sick, being idle and alone in your mind is a treacherous thing.

That was part of the reason why Kagome was grateful that she had Toga to look after. Not that she was happy he'd been injured and left for dead. Only that patching him up kept her from stewing too deep in her own self pity. Without him to focus on she would have probably worried herself to the grave twice over about her predicament and the absence of her friends. If he hadn't been lying in that pool of his own blood at the bottom of the well, what would have stopped her from trying to leap back in time, breaking her own neck in the process? If he hadn't been dying, she could have been dead.

Okay, wow. When she put it that way it sounded pretty self-centered and terrible.

It wasn't that she wouldn't have been totally stoked to meet a healthy and upright Toga, just that fixing him up really helped to make her feel better about—Enough!

Kagome snuffed out that line of thinking before it could finish rolling through the title credits in her head. She was not about to use the pain and misery of her best friend's dead dad to make herself feel better. There were other things that could be used to mollify her mind. Her heavy, foggy, pounding mind.

Even still, she allowed herself to admit that focusing on Toga's well being had allowed herself to skip around most of the horrible thoughts that threatened to creep up and pinch her. Thoughts exactly like that one. The very type of thoughts that made her feel totally unworthy of the title 'priestess.'

She wasn't a saint.

She was a young woman with feelings and fears indicative of her native time period—and yeah, the occasional Freudian slip of the tongue.

But, anyway. Kagome backpedaled to a safer script of internal dialogue as she shifted in her cot to be able to watch the birds without Toga seeing that her eyes were open. So far he'd accused her of neglecting her rest twice that afternoon, even though she'd slept on and off for nearly twelve hours already. There was only so much downtime and rest she could get before going batty and it was hard to tell if his strictness was out of ignorance of the human condition, or if it was payback for how strict she'd been with him all those past few weeks. Either way she was stuck.

Kagome sighed.

Brown finches dotted the naked branches of the trees that surrounded them, reminding her that winter wasn't that far off. How many weeks had she been in that time? How many days ago had she stopped keeping track? The birds flittered restlessly at each sound they heard and movement they felt; tiny and skittish, their feet didn't stay perched in one place very long.

For a second, Kagome found herself missing the brazen arrogance of the carrion crows. Gross as they were, they were confident, curious, and would have been easier to focus on than the finches. She was starting to understand why Toga had grown attached to them.

It was a shame they were dead.

Stuck inside her head, bedbound, and told to concentrate on her own well-being, Kagome's thoughts spiraled around the worries and questions that have plagued her solitude since day one. How did they get there? Why were they there? Did Inuyasha and the others think she was missing? Have they given up looking? Those were all things she'd asked herself before, usually while she was alone and bathing at the waterfalls where she couldn't help but let her anxieties speak. Then some newer questions joined in: How long did Toga have until he met his ultimate fate? Would it be soon? Would she be the one to bury him this time around?

Would she follow him to the grave, however it was going to happen?

Or was she going to die from a silly little cold before she could even follow through with her one little promise?

Struck backhanded by that last thought, Kagome sat upright, ignoring the startled looks from the men flanking her sleeping bag like protective garden statues. Rest was all fine and dandy, but Kagome needed to fight her cold, not wait for it to consume her! A little movement was necessary!

She grabbed the cloth from the kettle beside her and used it to scrub the sleep from her face. The cold of it was shocking. Water dripped down her neck and arms before the rag was pried from her fingers. Freezing, it was like jumping into a pond.

A waterfall.

That was it, wasn't it?

It had all come full circle: the cold, the negativity, the racing thoughts, the illness. It all made sense.

Or perhaps it didn't. Perhaps she was simply going mad with fever and her conclusions were complete nonsense. But as far as Kagome was concerned in that exact moment in time, she'd discovered the answer to the universe and the primal source to all of the mental stress and problems in her life:

Waterfalls were the root of all evil.

…

"I'm fine, I swear."

"I do not believe you."

"I don't care what you believe, just let me up."

"It is in your best interest to continue lying down. Humans who have fallen to the cold require rest."

"Oh, so you're an expert on human biology now?"

"You gotta keep in bed if you wanna get better."

"No, what I need is to get up before I explode!"

"Nonsense. You are not combustible."

"Have you seen what I can do with an arrow?"

His hand flinched from her shoulder. Kagome took the opportunity to jump up and away from Toga's diligent guard.

"Stay!" She put up both palms before the men could jump into action, holding them at bay as if she were staving off raptors.

They didn't move.

"I'm going to walk out of this camp and neither one of you are going to follow me. You can mother me all you like when I get back, but right now I need to go."

"But Miss Kago—"

"Ah!" She cut him off, backing up slowly. Her steps were wobbly.

"Where could you possibly need to go in the middle of—?"

"Pee!" Her voice cracked when she shouted. "I need to pee!"

Saburo turned crimson.

Togashimaru bashfully extended to her his walking stick.

Kagome snatched it from him.

"And no," She threw over her shoulder for good measure as she left. "I do not need a chaperone!"

…

"Then what's this thing?"

Kagome looked up from her notebook and leaned back against the tree she'd chosen to prop herself up once she had adequately convinced her guardians that babysitting didn't entail actually sitting on the baby. She was sick, not a flight risk. She wasn't running away to the Philippines anytime soon, and the ground had grown far too hard for comfort. They reluctantly conceded and allotted her some space.

Saburo insisted on cooking for them that evening, but quickly got distracted by the smorgasbord of odds and ends that resided within Kagome's bag alongside the cooking tools. It'd been funny the first few times. By the fourth gadget, though, Kagome found herself growing tired of the game. It was hard not to yawn.

So much for insisting she'd gotten enough sleep.

"That's a flashlight." The priestess responded to the perfectly harmless inquiry nonetheless. "If you slide that button up it'll turn on the light."

Curiously enamored by the technology, the blacksmith followed her instruction.

The beam of light hit him right between the eyes.

Yelping, Saburo fumbled helplessly for the device when it slipped through his large fingers. Instead of catching it, he accidently swatted it downward. It bounced to the ground, light flickering, then dimming, until finally dying from existence when it rolled to a rest against Kagome's knee. His gasp of horror filled the air.

Okay, so maybe it was still pretty funny.

Grabbing the torch from the ground, he tried the sliding the button again. When nothing happened he tried it a few more times. Still, there was no light. The artificial sun had been killed by his own two hands. The color drained from his face.

"I'm so sorry, Miss Kagome." He said in a low voice. "I musta broke yer quicklight."

"Flashlight." She corrected when she finished a particularly painful bout of chuckle-coughs. "Don't worry about it. Those batteries have been wanting to kick the bucket for a while now, so I haven't even been using it."

The bulky man spun the small cylinder in his fingers a few times, nodded, and then looked back up at her. "What are batter—?"

"Let's see what we've got left for food, yeah?" Kagome diverted before he could finish. Such an obvious tactic would have never worked on Toga, but Saburo was of a more innocent sort. Emphasizing her plight with a groan, she added, "I'm starving."

Setting down the flashlight, Saburo squatted lower to hover a palm over her forehead in concern. As soon as the modern wand was out of his hands, the time traveler pulled it beneath her covers all stealthy like. Out of sight out of mind, right? Naming things was one thing, but she really wasn't in the mood to try and explain the inner workings of a technology she barely understood herself and wouldn't be invented for another six hundred years. STEM classes weren't exactly her forte.

That and Saburo simply didn't need to know that she was from the future. It would only complicate things more.

"Yer still warm." He concluded. "Are ya dizzy?"

"A little bit."

"I'll get somethin' startin' right away. Just let me grab a fresh pot." Saburo took the near-empty kettle from her side and stood. "I won't be too long."

See? Worked like a charm.

He walked across the clearing, pausing for only a moment far on the other side of the fire where Toga sat running a knife along the underside of one of those rabbit skins he'd insisted on keeping. The demon's mouth moved, but Kagome wasn't near enough to catch anything that was said. He looked up at her, gold eyes making contact, and smirked.

There was knowing in that playfully raised silver brow of his.

Kagome's grip on her flashlight tightened. With her other hand she pressed a forefinger to his lips and pinched her eyebrows low in a silent threat. If he spilled the beans, so help him she would—

He didn't say another word. Instead, Toga's features fell a fraction before immediately sobering. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded, before turning back down to the task occupying his hands.

Kagome let out the breath she was holding with relief.

Success. She thought as she relaxed in the silence that followed. Success on two fronts!

…

"She is fooling you." Togashimaru spoke quietly under his breath as Saburo neared.

The smith scowled forward and replied in equally low tones. "It may've been a trick, but I'm not a fool." He looked at the General then, black eyes shadowed with distain. "When'd she eat last, demon Lord?"

Saburo didn't wait for an answer before walking past, the baggy pants of his hakama brushing against Togashimaru's knee with his closeness. The old dog's humor fell as he looked beyond the little priestess' chipper to see the gauntness of her cheeks. She was so much paler than he remembered her being.

She was starving.

They all were, to varying degrees. It simply hadn't gotten dire enough for him to notice, as he could go far longer without a proper meal than it seemed a mortal could.

Thoroughly chastened, Togashimaru nodded his head to placate the girl's antics before lowering his face once more to hide his frustration and shame.

To disregard such a fundamental need was disgraceful, especially after she had hunted game and provided for him with nothing of her own to gain from the act.

He was a failure as an alpha, as a guardian, and as a companion.

He was little more than a crippled stray.

…

"I am leaving the camp. Somebody must search for legitimate food, and the responsibility is mine."

Kagome's heart dropped ten leagues into the ocean before Toga could finish rising to his feet and lean against his bird staff. It was a struggle to reel it back in, so in the meantime she mutely flapped her lips at him, the bowl of burnt rice forgotten in her hand.

"No way!" She burst out when her ticker clicked back into place. Then the priestess started yelling. "Don't you dare even think about wandering out there alone! I don't care if you're just out hunting for the almighty mushroom! You're going to rip your stitches and bleed out somewhere and we won't be able to find you! No way! Not happening!"

At least, she had attempted to yell all that. Her voice was so hoarse that it shrank to half its usual volume and her coughing had forced her to stop only after the word 'about—!' Beyond that she needed a pause to catch her breath.

"Rice alone will not carry us much farther." Togashimaru continued while she was tapped out. "Even if it were palatable."

She wanted to deny it, to tell him that she was fine, it wasn't a problem at all, and that she could keep going without for a little bit longer, but the betraying growl of her stomach at the thought of real food beat her to the punch. Saburo's unfortunate attempt at porridge left a taste on her tongue that was acrid and dry; it might as well have been drywall—no offense to drywall. And yeah, she was left feeling lightheaded.

Had she been anybody else, she might have lost the will to argue and given into the fatigue. But this was Kagome Higurashi, and Kagome was as stubborn as they came in the modern era. She was not about to see him get hurt again.

The teen squared her shoulders. "No."

"He's right."

Kagome faltered and looked over at the blacksmith.

"We need somethin' better ta eat, 'else we aren't gonna get much farther. But if anyone's goin' out there, it's gonna be me."

"Yes, of course." She swung back around to Toga who was nodding calmly. "Among the three of us, you are the only one who is truly able bodied. It would only make sense for you to go." The silver haired demon leaned forward against his knee and met Saburo with a pleasantly neutral look. "Surely you know how to hunt? Else why wander into the forests and offer your service?"

Saburo met Toga's Buddha smile with one of his own. "Sure, why else?"

"Then I wish you luck."

"Thanks. You stay put. Wouldn't want ya getting' hurt or nothin'. That'd be a shame."

"Of course. That would not be pleasant for any of us."

"Right then." Saburo set down his untouched bowl of rice, grabbed the strap of his shoulder bag, and stood. "I should get goin,' yeah?"

The two men broke off their staring contest to look at Kagome when she sniffled. Awkwardly, she laughed and fanned her face to dry the dew in her eyes. "Sorry, it's the cold, I swear." That was more or less true. "I just thought you were going to fight like a couple of my friends back home for a moment there."

To that Toga chuckled and crossed his arms. "Are you insinuating me to be the boy or the wolf?"

Kagome shook her head and smiled. "I'm insinuating you to be Togashimaru." Then to the both of them she added a soft, "Thank you."

"What for, Miss Kagome?"

"For getting along."

He flushed and looked away. Toga too averted his gaze, but Kagome was too occupied by curling up in her blanket to notice.

"Like bandits." One of them agreed with her under their breath.

That was also more or less true.

End Chapter