Chapter 9

Kagome walked up stairs long after everyone else had gone to sleep to the room she shared with Sakura. Tired muscles protested each movement but she managed to shower before she crawled into bed. The hot water eased away most of her pain except for a hollow ache in her head. She closed her eyes praying for peaceful sleep. Instead she opened her dear eyes to crimson puddles of blood. She was still in the girl's room at Tazuna's house. Beside her, Sakura's body lay in a mangled mockery of peaceful sleep with cold blood staining the walls and the other girl's sheets. Kagome swallowed a scream. She stood ankle deep in blood and realized that she herself had been cut as well. Wounds aching and unable to heal she stumbled out in to the hallway to find Tazuna's daughter strewn across the top of the stair case. Blood dripped like a waterfall down the stairs. As Kagome took tentative steps toward the woman she realized that the skin of the woman's face had been peeled off. Her stomach flopped painfully.

Oh, Gods, She thought. Inari, the others.

Feet pounding against the wood, slipping from the residual blood on her feet she ran for the others. Still she made it to Inari's room as intact as she had been before. She almost relaxed when she saw him lying curled up in his bed but as she got closer she noticed that he, too, was just a mangled corpse. A sob escaped her throat. How had she allowed this to happen? Hadn't she sworn to protect them? And what about the others? In her dreams it was always three, never more than the dead bodies of her family. She ran down the hallway carefully avoiding Tazuna's daughter and picked her way down the stairs.

"Naruto? Sasuke? Kakashi-sensei? Tazuna-san?" she called.

There was no answer. She found the rest of the squad where Kakashi had been sleeping. It looked like Naruto had tried to fight back and had only gotten worse for it while Kakashi had tried to protect them both. But where was the bridge builder? She heard a muffled cry behind her in the kitchen. Slowly, hopefully she turned around only to find that, while Tazuna was alive he wouldn't be for much longer. Blood red eyes met hers just a set of claws slashed a cross his throat. She screamed and then he was behind her, holding her up as the blood continued to flow. He whispered accusations and promises in her ear as they watched the last of her friends die.

"Please, please, just kill me. Please!" She cried as his claws tore into the flesh of her arms.

"No, not yet. First pain, then we'll see about death." He promised.

"Please!" she sobbed.

She was crying, not for her own pain but for those she had let die. She had let them all down. They had trusted her, welcomed her, and in the end it was her demon that had killed them. The man who enjoyed her misery had killed them out of sport. All because she cared. The beating continued, she was numb. The whole time her eyes were on the bloodied body of Tazuna. In her mind she apologized over and over for his death and that of his family. Finally his clawed hands wrapped around her throat the sharpness of his claws nicking her skin as she thrashed and fought for breath. For a moment she wondered if it was really the end. Her world began to dim and she was too tired to fight him anymore. It was finally over.

Kagome shot straight up gasping for air just as the earliest rays of predawn light were beginning to enter through her window. That was the first time he'd let her die, the first time she'd begged him to do so. She stood up and cracked her back. The world outside was silent, still, somehow strikingly different from the realm of her nightmare. Besides the sounds she'd made and his voice at the very end there had been nothing. She shuddered as she walked in to the hallway, there were no bodies, of course not, it was only a nightmare. Only a nightmare, she repeated.

"Good morning Higurashi-san." Tazuna's daughter called.

"Morning." Kagome mumbled, her voice soft and quiet like it had been when she'd first come to the village.

The older women was preparing breakfast quietly. For a while Kagome watched from the wall as the woman pulled what she could together to feed them all. It made her sick the way the people in this country starved and how Tazuna's family was forced to feed them. Silently she slipped out of the kitchen and walked to the woods. She gathered herbs from what Kaede had taught her years before. When she had enough she put them in her hip pouch and brought out a bow from one of her scrolls. Before coming to this world hunting had been second nature to killing demons. She brought down a deer the first shot she took. Skinning it she cut up portions on the meat and sealed them in an empty scroll. She washed her hands and went back to the house.

"Your back!" Tazuna's daughter cried when she came back in. "I was so worried you left without a word. I didn't know…..what…"

Kagome placed the scroll on the counter and brought out the fresh meat. "I thought this might help."

"Where did you…?"

"Hunting in the woods. It's deer meat."

Producing the herbs from her pouch she helped the older woman to make breakfast for the group and pack a lunch for the bridge builder. The others came down slowly and Kakashi despite her healing, limped into the dining room. They sat down to eat. Kagome looked around the table. Last night all of them were dead in her nightmare. Because of her knowing them. She ate silently feeling the weight of her memories pushing at her soul.

"What kind of training will we be doing today, sensei?" Sakura asked.

"I'll show you when we get out there." Kakashi said standing up. As the team walked outside he fell behind and pulled Kagome aside. "I want you to go back with the bridge builder make sure nothing happens. We don't know if Gato will send more of his men to do what Zabuza failed to."

Kagome nodded and slipped back to the house. Turning around Kakashi continued on with the rest of the team. In truth he wanted her there to see if he was right about her abilities but he knew enough to believe that she would be able to protect Tazuna almost as well as he could. Lucky for him Kagome was the quietest of the group so the other three didn't notice she wasn't there. Even though he was pleased they didn't notice it worried him how little people cared for her. He had noticed others in the village openly ignore her or glare at her. It worried him but it didn't seem to bother her at all.

"Hey where'd Kagome go?" Naruto asked when they got to the training spot.

"I had her go back and guard the bridge builder." Kakashi explained. "Now for today's training. Tree climbing. But first what can you tell me about chakra?"

(With Kagome)

Tazuna's daughter made Kagome a lunch as soon as she heard that the kunoichi would be going with him to the bridge. Meanwhile the bridge builder thought on the girl and what she'd already done for him. In the battle she'd been wounded for him and had spoken up to protect him. He had insulted her in the village, called her weak. In fact she was far stronger than any of the others. She was also haunted. He had seen it in her eyes at breakfast and he noticed it as she ruffled Inari's hair before they left. The girl had seen far more that her companions. He didn't know when or why but it had followed her here.

"So, tell me, when did you decide to become a ninja?" he asked.

"The first time I thought about it was about two months after I was brought to the village. I was just a kid. With all the pain I'd felt for years before that I was beginning to feel at home there. Someone had told me about this feeling the villagers felt that connected them and…I had a desire to be a part of it. But then things changed." Her face hardened.

"Kagome?" he asked sensing the pain the subject held for her.

"The family that took me in was murdered. Even baby Ai. That was when I knew I would become a ninja. I would be strong enough to protect the people I cared about. I wouldn't let them down again." Her eyes hardened.

She didn't speak much the rest of the day. The men let her help when the noticed her strength. Nothing happened in the ninja attack department but Tazuna was thankful for the consideration. The two headed back to the house around dusk, Kagome with three or four fish of a dozen she'd stopped to catch and then give away. Back at the house she helped to prepare the food. For what seemed like hours they waited for the rest of team seven to show up. Finally Sakura and Kakashi showed up.

"What happened to the boys?" Kagome asked.

"Stayed behind to finish up. You missed it I mastered the technique in five minutes. Right, sensei?" Sakura said chipper with a hint of smugness.

Looking at her sensei, Kagome raised her eyebrow, the man shrugged. "Oh, really what technique was it?"

"A chakra control technique. You seem to have fine chakra control, that's why I let you go back. Anyway, all one has to do is focus their chakra on the soles of their feet and use it to climb a tree without the use of their hands." Kakashi explained.

"I read about that once. I actually tried out the water version on my own once."

Noticing the way Sakura's face fell Kagome fought off a smirk. It was bad, almost as bad as the boys but it was fun to see Sakura knocked down a peg. The training was below academy level in her mind. To her, training was difficult, it made you sore for weeks, and then it made you stronger. Mastering a technique like that in such short time would have led Kagome to find a harder technique to try and practice until it was as close to perfection as possible. She let the thoughts go as the boys walked in and dinner was served.