Chapter 28 Run (or, a rapid series of ascending—or in this case—descending, musical notes which are closely spaced in pitch forming a scale, arpeggio, or other such pattern)

The next morning, Kurama felt like his head was splitting in two. He opened one eye and found himself still entangled with Asuka in the golden field. His arms were draped over her and hers were wrapped tightly around his midsection. He felt her fingers in his tail.

"Asuka?" he asked, bleary.

"I'm here, Love. Morning."

He rolled off her and placed his hand on her cheek. Her bronze hair glowed like a waterfall as she responded to his touch.

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked.

Kurama's head swam with the images and feelings from the previous night. "I do, but it's a little hazy." He squeezed his eyes. "I guess that's what the expression 'drunk on love' means."

She laughed, and he stopped it with a kiss.

"I suppose I can't keep you here for more," he breathed.

"No, though I wish you could."

Kurama kissed her mouth again before he reluctantly broke away. They both sat up, still naked among the reeds. "Thank you."

She traced his jaw. "I love you."

"And I love you." They stared at each other for a few minutes before Asuka finally stood. Kurama watched her loveliness sway through the reeds. His ears picked up the hum of her power. So powerful. So glorious. And she's mine. Until the end. He got up and dressed in white clothes while Asuka put on her iridescent purple dress.

"Hold my hand?" she asked.

He slipped it into hers, and they took off running again through the quiet morning of the perfect circle. I'll remember yesterday, forever. No matter what happened, no matter where they went, no matter what awaited Asuka at the lake. He'd remember it.

After what seemed like a few hours, they stopped at a grove of trees.

"I've never seen this type of fruit before," Kurama said as he picked the spikey blue melon off a weighted branch. "Shall I cut them open?"

"Please."

Kurama sliced the fruit open with his sharpened nail and gave one half to Asuka. It was tart, almost evoking the flavor of a raspberry, but not quite. Energy sizzled through his body as he consumed the light blue pulpy innards.

They ate one more fruit each. Once they were done, Asuka went to the center of the fruit tree grove. "Here is the gateway."

Kurama slipped his hand into his wife's again and together they passed through the gateway to the Second Circle.

There was no height difference, so they walked into the next plane, where a fierce wind met them and almost blew them back through the gate. Lightning flickered above them and crashed into the ground less than a kilometer away.

Another lightning bolt zigged down from the sky but never connected to the ground. Kurama squinted.

"Kurama, hold on!" Asuka shouted. "That's a time distortion bubble!"

"It's huge," he said, eyes widening.

Asuka gripped Kurama's hand tight and stepped up to the bubble that was growing at an exponential rate. She placed her hand on the oily surface and pushed. After a moment, she frowned. "I can't get rid of it. The distortion is too big for me to manage, but I stopped it from growing bigger."

"What do we do? Go around it?" Kurama shouted over another crack of lightning.

"We can't. It's kilometers and kilometers across. We have to go through it." Kurama felt Asuka's power surround them and she stepped into the bubble.

It was like he was floating underwater, and the silence pressed uncomfortably in his overly sensitive Yoko ears. With great effort, he turned his head and looked at Asuka. Her expression was pained.

Kurama tried moving his legs, but then realized they were powerless. It was all Asuka's effort moving them through the bubble.

Just a little more, Love. Just a little more.

When they came out of the other side, Asuka collapsed on the ground.

"Let me carry you for a little while," Kurama said as he scooped her up.

She nodded into his chest.

"Can you tell me where to go?"

"I can't share my power with you right now, but keep going west. We need to hurry. If we don't catch this gate, we'll have to wait days in this circle."

"I can sense the yokai," Kurama said. "And they're much stronger than anything I've felt."

Kurama ran in the direction Asuka said. His body felt strange, and he was beginning to lose his sense of time passing. It was only the second circle. How much worse would it get? I'm so glad I came with you. He pressed a kiss to Asuka's temple.

The wind battered against Kurama again, so he powered up his ki to keep himself and Asuka stable. The lightning continued streaking across the dark sky and the thunder boomed so loud it rattled his bones.

After an indeterminate time, Asuka stirred. "Here. It's open."

They went through the gateway. There was a slight drop to the Third Circle, and Kurama landed gracefully on his feet.

It was raining icicles.

Kurama held up his arm and deflected the pelting shards with his ki. He felt even stronger yokai and compressed his ki as much as possible to avoid detection. "Yusuke would've had a field day if he'd known these circles existed when he lived in the Makai."

"Good thing he's gotten better with that sort of thing. " Asuka said. "He would never leave Keiko or the boys now."

"Never. Though, I know he's enjoying fighting right now."

"Some things never change."

"Indeed." Kurama paused. "Are they still fighting?"

"I think so." Pause. "Yusuke is going to end up with a scar across his face."

"Because of that yokai, he was fighting?"

"Yes."

"Well, that is not so bad. I'm sure he'll brag to everyone about it."

"He could…" Asuka bit her lip. "No. I think that's an alternate timeline."

Kurama decided not to ask. He had complete faith in Yusuke and Kuwabara. "Which way is the portal?"

"Northwest, about a day from here in those mountains."

Kurama saw the peaks ahead of them. They reflected a strange black sheen. "You can still sense time, then?"

"I can, but it's starting to get difficult."

"Are time distortion bubbles going to be a problem?"

"I don't sense many. Strange."

Kurama wasn't sure what that meant either, but he wasn't going to complain. He took off as fast as he dared, holding onto Asuka with one hand and using his ki to keep the ice from pelting them. He feared using a plant would attract unwanted attention. The last thing they needed was to get into a fight. "I don't think my human body could have handled the way time is warped down here, nor this hellish weather."

"No, probably not."

The surrounding vegetation was hard and thorny, probably because of the raining ice. Kurama also noticed the creatures living in the circle had hard shells and other ways to cope with the danger they lived with.

They soldiered on. When Kurama got to the mountain base, he realized the black sheen he'd seen from the distance was a thin layer of ice that covered the entire mountain range. The face of the mountain was a 70-degree incline, and it towered above, threatening to hurl them off should they attempt the climb. Kurama set Asuka down. "Get on my back, Love. The only way we're getting to the top is to claw our way up."

Asuka did as he requested. She hooked one arm around his neck and flared her ki. Just enough to keep the icicles from cutting them.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready."

With a giant leap, Kurama hit the face of the mountain and dug his claws into the ice. He slid down, but stopped. He grunted, then flung himself upward. And then upward. And then upward again. And again.

His fingers bled from the ice as he hauled himself and Asuka onto a cliff edge. But as soon as they got to the top, they fell through the gateway and rolled into the Fourth Circle.

Kurama couldn't get off the ground.

At first, he was confused and disorientated. But then he realized why. The gravity. The gravity was four…no, six times what they were used to. It compressed his chest as if he was pushing an enormous weight with it. Asuka groaned and attempted to roll off of him. Her power flared and shot through him, sending electrical tingles and fleeting images of the near future until she got off.

Get up. Now, Kurama told himself. He flared his ki and pushed off the ground, his already sore muscles straining. He stood upright and powered up his ki.

"Not so much, Love," Asuka whispered. "As low as you can."

He powered down his ki and his calf muscles protested in agony. Asuka took his hand and they slowly, deliberately, made their way through the circle. His tether was Asuka. Sometimes he found her in his arms, safe and warm and protected. And sometimes she was next to him, walking step by step through the aching circle.

The Fifth Circle was a swampy mess where giant yokai, the size of trees, fought each other. Their steps sent ripples through the mire and almost overtook Asuka and Kurama as they traversed the swamp. There was also a strange gurgling sound beneath their feet, which Kurama tried not to think about too much. Not that he could, because his mind kept getting lost.

The Sixth Circle was warm, and the Seventh Circle was hot. It was so hot, both he and Asuka had to use their ki to regulate their temperatures. The yokai were ten times stronger than he was. At one point, he thought he heard Asuka telling him there were no more time distortions. That was good because they had enough to worry about avoiding the yokai…if they could even be called that.

By the time they entered the Eighth Circle, Kurama knew he'd lost all of his faculties. He could hardly remember where they were or why they were there. At the very edge of his consciousness, he heard strange voices speaking words he couldn't understand. Traveling this long with Asuka's ki running through his body was confusing him, and the circle's time pressure was, as well.

Echoing between two canyon walls, calling him back to himself, was Asuka's voice. He blinked, briefly coming to. Before him stood a gigantic creature as tall as a mountain. It had black fur. Or maybe it was rocky. Kurama couldn't be sure of anything anymore. The creature's roar blew them back with a disgusting breath. Without thinking, Kurama moved his hand to throw a seed, but Asuka stopped him. Her power flared with light.

The black creature stopped and lumbered away.

"Not too much further," Asuka said to him.

"I don't care that I can't climb out of the Nine Circles on my own."

"What?"

Kurama squeezed her hand. He felt delirious.

"I can gift you some of my power. We'll find a way."

"I'll just stay with you."

"You—"

"How long have we been down here?" he asked. "It feels like decades."

"I don't know."

"Okay."

They went through the next gate. Or, at least, it seemed like they did.

-* ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ *-

Asuka tugged Kurama's hand. "Just a little further."

He'd been repeating the same string of sentences since arriving in the circle and she worried. It seemed no one was supposed to travel through the circles of the Makai. Time was not only getting slower as the circles got smaller, but stranger as well. Maybe that had something to do with why Kurama was losing it. Maybe not.

The Eighth circle was equivalent to the artic. Asuka fed Kurama more of her power to keep him warm since he was lost in a dream, but it was a difficult balance between that and overwhelming him with her Foresight. They'd been expending massive amounts of energy on this journey without sleeping or eating, and her own power was almost depleted.

This body might not need food, but she was starving all the same. She was worried about her husband.

The last gateway wasn't too far. She knew it wasn't. They just had to get there. One step at a time as they trudged through the snow. When her eyelashes stuck together, Asuka begrudgingly expended more of her ki to warm herself and her beloved.

There was no way she could've made the journey alone, and doing it in her yosei body would've meant death. Her yosei body. She'd been in this one for so long now that she found herself missing her half-mortal body. In that body, she didn't have to constantly hold back her power.

How ironic.

There was always something, wasn't there? No matter what body she had, there was always something.

"I love you," Kurama said next to her.

"And I love you."

Maybe she could gift him some of her power to get him out of the circles if he wasn't too stubborn. Maybe he'd be so out of it, he'd get himself up to Circle Zero before he realized what had happened.

There was a cave at a base of a mountain, and Asuka tugged Kurama toward it. He stumbled forward, and she caught him, pushing up his great yokai body until he straightened. She was glad nobody else came with them on this journey because she wouldn't have been able to protect them. This was hard enough.

Asuka thought about her and Kurama's intense lovemaking session so long ago in the First Circle. She let herself get completely carried away by holding onto their moment for far longer than she should've. His human body would've burned away if they'd tried that. In fact, his yokai body almost did.

I'm so sorry, Kurama. I'm so sorry I pushed you away and hurt you. I know that was decades ago…maybe…but…

"I love you," he said again. "I'd do anything to protect you."

"I know."

Asuka wasn't sure how long they'd been away from their friends, but she missed them with an ache so deep it made her angry at her behavior toward them.

I shouldn't have isolated myself so much. I wasted precious time trying to protect everyone from my pain.

Asuka thought about her final conversation with Shizuru, Keiko, and Yukina. Her friends knew she couldn't have converted her ki without some kind of extreme catalyst. Tired from the burden of keeping secrets, Asuka finally spilled.

She told them about feeling her conflicted feelings, and how she sometimes felt jealous of their ability to have children. She explained how gross that made her feel because she loved them all and their children so much.

To her great surprise, she wasn't the only one battling complicated feelings.

"I know how you feel, at least a little," Shizuru said, clasping her hand. "When I see the way you look at Kurama, I think about…" she blinked. "Sometimes, I think about how the person I love most was taken from me. I see how Yusuke has grown up into such a wonderful father, and I think about how my son and daughter have to grow up without theirs. I love you all so much and pray you never experience what I went through. But it hurts, and I often feel alone. Asuka, sometimes those thoughts come, and when they do, you have to acknowledge them, and also know those feelings aren't your entire story."

A wave of emotion rolled over Asuka. I never once considered Shizuru's feelings. Her husband died, and she still grieves him. And there are times she feels alone when all of us are together with our spouses. But she also loves us and our happiness and wouldn't change that for the world. How selfish I was to think I was the only one in mourning. And all of us have parts of our lives we wish we could change. Keiko wishes she could take a more active role in the restaurant but can't because of the boys and the new baby coming. Yukina loves seeing us but has anxiety living in the city and she wishes Kuwabara's job allowed them to live at Genkai's retreat.

In adulthood, there's always something you wish you could change. But taking care of each other makes it easier to live the lives we have.

There had been a lot of crying and hugging and apologizing all around. Keiko apologized for bugging Asuka about having kids, and Asuka apologized to all of them for being emotionally distant.

And right now, in this wintery hellish place, Asuka missed them. Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei, Yukina, Maeko, Shizuru, Tetsuya, Tomiko, Keiko, Raiden, and Genki. Her family. She missed them so much.

"I love you," Kurama said again.

"I love you too." The depths of hell are a better place because you're here with me.

They entered the cave.

There was an enormous three-headed dog at the entrance of the cave, and it snarled when it heard them come in. But Asuka wasn't afraid. She walked up to it, still holding Kurama's hand. She raised her free one and flared the last of her ki. Each of the dog's heads sniffed at her. They whimpered and then the dog shuffled to the side. It bowed as she passed.

It recognizes me.

She'd always had this feeling that she'd been here before, especially with the dragons saying to return, but that confirmed it.

Meanwhile, Kurama had stopped speaking completely. When she looked behind at him, his amber eyes were glazed over. They shuffled past the three-headed dog and entered the portal. Destiny awaited.

Author's Note:

My daughter has had camp in the mornings this week which means I've done almost nothing but edit edit edit while she's there. Which is great, because I can keep pushing these chapters out for you and for me. I'll be honest, I'm getting tired of this pace but the thought of wrapping up this story after more than 6 months of it being incomplete excites me (and as I said, my original fiction is begging for my love ahaha). And so, I shall keep going.

The next chapter will answer lots of questions. I'm excited for you to read it so I hope to have it up very soon.

LadyFox 15: I'm so glad you are enjoying the chapters and you liked Asuka's transformation sequence. I also liked that you were right there with Kurama, worried she was going to leave. Thankfully, Asuka has had some growth and realized going on her own would be a bad idea this time.

I'm also glad you liked Hiei's entrance during the fight sequence! It was such a tropy thing for me to do but since this is an anime fan fiction I went ahead and did it. Honestly, he deserved it after being the butt of so many jokes and being out of commission XD. It was really fun to write him saving the day so epically.

I really wanted Asuka to know she didn't cause her miscarriage. It's a common sentiment among women, to blame themselves for their miscarriages because its really hard to accept that it just...happens. And that no, that run you went on didn't cause it. That food you ate didn't cause it. Whatever it was. It's not your fault. For Asuka, it was no, using your ki didn't cause this to happen. And if you are a woman who has experienced a miscarriage and happens to be reading this, I send my love to you. It's so hard.

I hope you liked Asuka's reflections on her conversation with the other women! A lot of what they talked about is similar to Asuka's conversation with Kurama. As humans, we tell the same story and say the same things over and over but in a story, the impact when you read those revelations matters more, hence we had to wait to let her speak to Kurama first because he's the priority. This group has been through so much and their bond is so strong. Though this is Asuka and Kurama's story it was still fun to explore what these characters would be like as adults.

Thank you again for all your support. It means the world to me and I love reading your comments.