Punishment

Inuyasha-Avengers

Kagome-Loki

Comedy, Romance

Series

For his misdeeds on Midgard, Loki was given only one punishment: Kagome.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Avengers, Inuyasha, or Norse Mythology. Also, I'm sorry if there are lots of facts that are wrong, or don't make sense and stuff.

Chapter 19: Montage

Kagome had thought that there couldn't have been anything worse than having to run the 3,933 steps (she counted), but then she hit her third year of training.

"Congratulations," Freyja had said flatly, waking Kagome an hour earlier than normal, "You've graduated to the next level of your training." At first, Kagome had been excited; for those three years, Freyja had made Kagome do nothing but the same chores she had done at her home shrine: sweeping the grounds, tending to the trees, dusting, daily prayers, etc. But then, Kagome learned what her new tasks would be. In addition to running up and down the stairs twice a day and her cleaning duties, Kagome had to learn Stav—a Nordic martial art, which she had never heard of until Freyja introduced her to it—with both a bow and arrow and a staff.

After another nine years, Kagome again thought that she had finally begun to settle into her daily routine; practicing with her staff and her bow an arrows had become meditative, and all of the stretches and stances she practiced flowed easily from her fingertips to her toes. It was at this point that Freyja had again woken Kagome an hour earlier than normal to notify her that she would be increasing her training load. Now, in the early afternoons until late in the night, Kagome would travel down to the main part of the city and go to the hospice to work on her bedside manner and non-magical healing abilities. "Essentially," a very annoyed Kagome thought to herself every time she began the three-hour trek to the glorified outpatient clinic, "I'm just a normal old nurse!" When she voiced her thoughts to Freyja, the Goddess had rolled her eyes, but said nothing, and Kagome knew better than to push the topic, so she went along with it.

Kagome rejoiced at the fifteen-year mark, when Freyja finally told her that she would be cutting Kagome's hospice hours so that she could return to the temple sooner to work on her regulations and manipulations of her energies. For several decades this pattern continued before Freyja and Kagome had their first non-training interaction.

"Kagome." Freyja said one day during Stav training as she corrected the younger woman's stance, "you should be in your sixty-first year, should you not?"

Kagome had jolted the moment Freyja had said her name as it was the first time the Goddess had called her by her name—it had also been so long that Kagome had almost forgotten the sound of her own name. She nodded, and relaxed to the resting pose, following Freyja's example. Kagome had not seen herself in a mirror since before she had started her training, though she had been able to see that she was quite fit, and her skin remained smooth and youthful from her active lifestyle—though, she also had the feeling the Shikon had influenced her aging a bit, she couldn't say how much it had, but she couldn't imagine that it would be too great.

"Though you certainly age faster than I, as a Goddess, so, your appearance is that of a year hardly older than when we first met. Perhaps your thirtieth, if even that. Have I been mislead in my belief about how rapidly humans decay?" Freyja looked more annoyed than anything, though her voice shone with genuine curiosity.

"No," Kagome replied, "humans age relatively quickly. I am the keeper of a relic that slows down my aging, I guess. But I'm surprised it's by so much!"

"Have you not noticed the supple quality of your own skin, girl?" Freyja asked.

"Well," Kagome said, "I just assumed that it was good genetics or something." The dry look on Freyja's beautiful face made Kagome blush.

"I do not know of what a "genetics" is, but I assure you, as you are human, it is probably poor."

"Probably," Kagome laughed off Freyja's arrogance, knowing that the Goddess meant no harm; it was in her personality to be carelessly arrogant.

"You will not need your golden apple until we finish your training. That is all I meant to say by bringing up the topic of your youth." Freyja said. Kagome knew that the conversation was over, and went back to training.

Another decade passed without many words of encouragement of any sort, until the morning of the fifty-first year. "Good morning, Kagome." Freyja greeted at their morning meal. "Today is your last day in my home. You will need to do no training, but you will take today to choose the God you will serve for the rest of your immortal existence—though, I suppose, you have already chosen." Freyja placed on the table Kagome's golden apple, and pushed it to the girl across the tabletop. "You will look youthful for your God, for he will hardly look a decade older than he did when you parted, and you have aged at least two."

Annoyed, but nevertheless grateful, Kagome took her apple, and stood up to bow to the Goddess in thanks. Although Freyja had not been the mot cordial mistress, she had been attentive and dutiful, and Kagome knew that she must have been just as difficult for the Goddess to handle as the Goddess was for Kagome to handle.

"Thank you, Freyja. I will be sure to carry your training with me for the rest of my days." When Kagome straightened her back, she could have sworn that there was a gentile dusting of the most beautiful pink upon Freyja's cheeks.

"Just shut up and eat your breakfast," the flustered Goddess mumbled.

xxx

mb: sorry I didn't get to update yesterday. I was swamped with last minute work to do (because I procrastinated). I'll get one more chapter out in the next few hours before midnight to make up for it. Promise.

Also, I know this isn't my best chapter, I'm sorry. I wasn't entirely sure how to handle five-ish decades in a single chapter. Also, everything moves in threes or nines because those numbers are apparently important to Norse mythology. Also, also, The staircase isn't actually that tall; apparently there is one-here on earth! (lol)-that is over 11,000 steps! (too lazy to look up the exact number, sorry)