Chapter 56
Viriliter agite
"Act in a manly way"

"Mom frowned at me.
'You'd be destroying what
makes it special' she said,
'It's the Joshua tree's struggle
that gives it its beauty'."
—The Glass Castle

Kagome had underestimated several things. Well, not really several. More like two that were just really, really big ones.

First, her endurance. She'd expected to tire out quicker than she had in the past; however, she hadn't anticipated feeling like she needed an eight hour nap by the time dinner rolled around.

They'd barely been up and about for a few hours! How was she supposed to keep up and hold her weight if she couldn't actually manage to walk? And it wasn't like she was expecting for Inuyasha to carry her the entire way either. Not that she thought he wouldn't, but she needed to be able to carry her own weight! Both literally and metaphorically.

So when Sango suggested that they find a place to settle down for the evening, Kagome had to restrain herself from groaning out a sigh of relief that finally—finally!—they were going to stop walking and sit down.

If Sango hadn't made the suggestion, she was almost to the point of asking Inuyasha if she could ride on his back. Well, not almost. She was. She'd just been thinking about a way to word it that wouldn't make him want to head back towards the village immediately for fear of something being wrong with her.

There wasn't anything wrong; she was just really out of shape.

It didn't take long for them to find a small clearing off the road that seemed to meet Inuyasha's approval. She and Sango eagerly moved to collect firewood while Inuyasha leapt away to go hunt something after much grimacing and whispered finger pointing between him and Sango. Miroku and Shippo worked on cleaning up the site so that they could sleep on it, and prepping the fire pit.

"How are you doing?" Sango asked, leaning down to pick up a large branch as Kagome winced behind her back.

"I'm fine," she said, making a vain attempt at keeping her voice even-keeled.

"You're sure about that?" Sango asked, raising an eyebrow at her as they walked.

"Uh, yes?"

Sango sighed, coming to a full stop and turning towards Kagome, who already sensed the irritation in the slayer, but also didn't want to be caught in her web of lies so early in the game.

Kagome had not been 'alright' for a long time. She was pretty sure that everyone knew this.

Sango gripped her arm, halting her movements.

"You've been almost limping since we passed the fork in the road. I'm surprised Inuyasha hasn't noticed."

"It's fine!" Kagome countered quickly. "I'm fine! Really!"

Judging from Sango's face, that might have been a little too reassuring and a little too quick. Kagome winced as she shifted her weight from foot to foot in an attempt to relieve the aching pressure on her feet and continue searching for branches for them to pile up and burn. It was less effective than she thought it was. Kagome started to turn away, and Sango shifted to stand in front of her.

"Really, Sango? I just need to build up my stamina. That's all."

Sango stared at her face, and Kagome tried to remain as sincere and impassive as she could.

"I should tell Inuyasha—"

"No! He'll make us turn back! I just need a few days to adjust. That's it!"

Sango sighed, long and low and frustrated, tilting her head up to stare at the canopy for a moment.

"I'll take you back to camp and I'll finish—"

"No! You can't do that!" Kagome said with a shake of her head. "If you do that, Inuyasha is going to know something is wrong!"

"So something is wrong!"

"No! I'm just sore, that's all! I swear it!" Kagome struggled to find the words to convince her friend, floundering with the right thing to say.

"Fine, but you need to tell us when you need to rest. Being this sore after a half day of walking is going to make you miserable, and it's only going to hinder your recovery even more."

"I will! I promise!" Kagome nodded enthusiastically, moving to start picking up branches again. Kagome took the silence as acceptance and continued to work. Sango moved along beside her picking up branches as they wandered.

"Okay, I think that's enough," Sango said, and Kagome inwardly cheered. "Let's head back. Try to look less excited," she commented, and Kagome cleared her guided them back to camp with ease, and Kagome attempted to keep her winces and limping to a minimum.

By the time they reached the camp, Inuyasha was pacing around the stone circle for the fire. He'd already set up the fish on spits for them to roast.

He moved quickly to take her load of branches from her arms, despite her noise of protest.

It wasn't much, and it was mostly for show.

Like did she want to carry her own weight and be helpful? Yes, of course.

Was she also secretly glad that she didn't have to carry those stupid sticks anymore? Also, yes.

She was more than happy to help, but her feet were killing her, and she just wanted to sit down and not get up for a while.

She found a root that was sticking up out of the ground and tried to keep her face impassive as she lowered herself to sit on it. Shippo eagerly joined her showing off what he'd been practicing with the village boys as Sango and Inuyasha prepared the fire and set the fish up to roast. Miroku offered to go refill the bottles at the stream where Inuyasha had gone fishing.

Inuyasha glanced back at her before quickly diverting his gaze back to the fire.

Sparks went up in front of him, and she refocused on Shippo's antics, clapping as he performed another trick.

Surely Sango wasn't ratting her out. She wouldn't—

Though it wouldn't be out of the realm of unexpected. She had already threatened to tell Inuyasha.

The fire started, rising slowly over the stacked branches, and Inuyasha rose to his feet first as Sango set the fish to cook. She watched his fists unclench, before he strode the couple of steps towards her, sinking down beside her against the tree.

"You doin' okay?" He asked.

"Of course!" She chirped, and he studied her for a long moment, one that she struggled to maintain the facade, because sitting on the root actually didn't provide her feet that much relief, but she was too afraid that her face would betray her discomfort. And she couldn't do that with Inuyasha so close.

She'd give herself away.

He huffed through his nose, turning back to the fire.

She wasn't entirely sure what that meant, only that it left her concerned about what might have been shared.

Her feet were throbbing, and she just wanted to sit down and be comfortable, but she was stuck, and Sango wasn't looking at her at this particular moment.

Not to mention, Inuyasha was now sitting so close that she definitely couldn't lower herself to the ground without him noticing her.

She glanced at the ground next on her other side, but the ground was too lumpy to be of any relief there.

And she really just wanted to curl up against his side and rest her head on his shoulder, seeking comfort and warmth from him.

Sango and Miroku were sitting next to each other, and a clawed hand tugged at her fingers, pulling them away from where she realized that she'd been picking at the hem of her shirt. He stared at her, holding her hand still, and she looked at it before shifting her gaze to him.

"You nervous?" He asked, and she shook her head, pulling her hand free.

"No?" She said, wincing at the upward inflection of her voice.

His eyebrow raised at that, and she smiled at him in an attempt to reassure him that she was in fact perfectly fine and not at all regretting her decision to force them all back out on the road.

She'd die on that hill before she admitted that perhaps another few days in the village might not have been such a terrible idea after all.

"Keh," he scoffed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Inuyasha finally rose to check on the fish, and Kagome eagerly took her opportunity, shifting painfully down to the ground and letting her legs stretch out, trying her best to hide her wince from the people across the fire.

When he turned around two sticks in hand, he gave her an odd look as he noted her change in position. To which, she merely smiled, holding her hand out for her dinner.

She'd distract him by eating, no matter how not hungry she was at the moment. He'd already peeled the skin off the fish for her, tossing it to Kirara who eagerly began chewing at the offered pieces. Not that she didn't get her own fish—or two—but Kirara also loved fish skins, so Kagome always made sure that she peeled them off and gave them to her whenever possible.

A love for fish skin was apparently not an inherent feline trait. Buyo could have cared less that she'd gone through the effort of bringing him anything.

Kagome picked off pieces of meat with her fingers, eating delicately as Inuyasha practically inhaled his. He grabbed another fish from the fire, eagerly digging into that one as well.

His eyes flicked to her own fish, and while, in the beginning of their travels, even before she—went away, she'd thought he wanted to eat it too, but now, she realized that he was monitoring just how much she was eating, like Shippo had claimed.

She ate more than she really wanted, nearly finishing off the entire fish, but feeling her stomach rebel against anything else, made her reconsider trying to force herself to eat more than she could handle. She offered the leftovers to Kirara, who happily took them from her fingers. Looking over at Inuyasha, he frowned a little but seemed appeased enough at what she'd managed to get down.

The fire warmed her feet and calves, and she listened to Shippo talk about the new tricks that he was learning and practicing, feeling the hard day begin to edge in on her ability to stay awake. Her head found some comfort resting on Inuyasha's shoulder, her hand sneaking around his arm and holding it against herself, as her eyelids grew heavy and heavier.

She woke warm and and utterly terrified. Each breath she took sounded like police sirens in the dead of night. She stared at the darkened forest that stretched out in front of her, illuminated a very short span by the fire behind her.

Curling herself up tighter in her sleeping bag, she clenched her eyes shut and tried very hard not to cry.

A muffled thump landed just beside her head, and she quickly turned to see red haori clad legs squatting down beside her.

"Hey," he whispered, "just me."

Scrambling out of her sleeping bag, she threw her arms around his neck, pulling him closer.

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head.

The second thing she'd highly underestimated: her anxiety.

Kaede was right. She felt better in the village, because it was safe. She'd been so eager to get out that she hadn't considered that she might not actually be better.

And this first night out of the safety and protection of that little storage room in Kaede's hut, was only highlighting that fact.

Inuyasha's arms wrapped around her, slowly and with a familiar steady firmness, and she felt that growing edge of discomfort dissipating as she took long and slow inhales.

It helped having him so close, but that wasn't a permanent solution.

However, it was working right now, and Kagome was going to take what little comfort she could get wherever she could get it.

"Bad dream?" He asked, and she shook her head.

She knew why she was scared. She knew exactly why she was nervous. But she didn't want to voice it.

The last few times that she'd slept out in the trees like this, she'd—they'd—it was almost humiliating to speak of it now. She felt like a little girl still scared of monsters in the closet. It had been well over a month, shouldn't she be better by now?

Why wasn't she normal yet?

A branch broke in trees beyond, and a whimper escaped her before she could stop it. His hand drifted slowly up and down her back, and she tried to feel less embarrassed at needing to be coddled.

"Here," he finally said, pushing her away to settle back against the tree, his legs extended out in front of him. His arm raised up slightly as if inviting her over.

She looked at him, and then at the others spread around the fire.

"What about the others?"

"You said you didn't care," he muttered, letting his arm fall slightly. She didn't care, but she knew that he did, and she didn't want him to feel uncomfortable because of her childish needs to be coddled like a little girl.

She shifted her sleeping bag a little, slowly lowering herself down to where her head rested on his thigh, just like she'd done the night before.

His hand rested gently on her shoulder, and she breathed out slowly.

She closed her eyes, but that didn't really help either. Instead, it felt like she was just removing one of her senses to warn her of impending danger and oom.

After a few moments, his hand drifted to her hair, running his fingers through it and along her scalp.

Sighing through her nose, she let her body fall slack against his thigh.

Inuyasha was here.

Nothing would be able to get to her.

She was as safe as safe could be out in the trees and streams, and as long as he stayed, there was no reason to be afraid.

She'd always had such faith in him to keep her safe from harm. Perhaps she just needed to remind herself of it.

Kagome woke very slowly, almost regretfully.

She buried her head into her pillow as it shifted underneath her.

Claws scratched at the base of her neck, and she groaned, stretching her aching legs under the layer of her sleeping bag.

Inhaling deeply, she blinked a few times at the glaringly bright sunlight drifting right into her face. She rose up a bit, rubbing her face as the claws disappeared from her skin.

Pushing herself up to a sitting position, she noted that Inuyasha remained in the same position as he'd been in when she fell asleep.

"You stayed?" She asked, watching him shift to sit in his normal cross-legged position.

"Why wouldn't I?" He asked, rising to stand.

She glanced across the fire at their companions who remained asleep.

"Is it still early?" She asked, squinting as she looked up at the sky.

"Yeah," he said with a slight nod. "You still tired?"

"I feel okay," she answered with a shrug.

Sango sat up from her bedding, and Inuyasha rose to his feet.

"Start up the fire. I'll go get us something for breakfast." And with that, he leapt off into the trees. Sango stretched her arms above her head, with a broad yawn.

"How're you doing?" Sango asked, rising her to feet.

Kagome shifted herself to stand out of her sleeping bag, and she immediately regretted moving.

Her legs ached and feet were practically throbbing.

"How bad do you hurt?" Sango asked, squatting beside her.

"How bad does what hurt?" Miroku asked already standing to his feet and moving towards them. Shippo was bounding over towards her too. His eyes were large and round, and she quickly smoothed his hair.

"It's just my feet are a little sore," Kagome finally admitted, mortified at not being up to par with her friends any longer. Not that she really was ever at the same physical level that they were, but she could at least keep up with them when they walking.

She struggled to get her legs out of her sleeping bag, grimacing at the sharp ache in her muscles.

"She overdid a little bit yesterday," Sango explained, holding her hands out to help Kagome to her feet. "Come on, I'll help you to the river to wash up and hopefully we'll be back before Inuyasha."

"And why, pray tell, did you not ask for a break?" Miroku asked, as Kagome slowly rose to her feet with an obvious grimace.

Standing was so much worse. So, so much worse.

She groaned, leaning against Sango, who patted her shoulder, with a small laugh.

"It'll get better," she told her.

"Inuyasha is going to be awful," she groaned.

"Yep," Sango chirped. "Come on, the more you move the less it'll hurt."

Shippo eagerly offered to guide them out of the small clearing, heading them towards the small river that Inuyasha had caught dinner from yesterday.

Kagome gimped her way through the woods after Sango, who held her hand as they moved through the trees.

"Why does it hurt this bad?" She whined. "We went on a lot of walks in the village!"

"It's different, and we also had a lot of breaks, which you should have said you needed," she said with a stern glance over at her shoulder.

"Point taken," she mumbled, shuffling her feet behind her. Sango stopped them beside the river, and Kagome slowly lowered herself down to her knees to splash some water on her face.

Every single muscle in her legs ached like she'd done nothing but run around like a crazy person yesterday, and she'd barely done anything that was super exerting. At least nothing to make her ache this badly.

Splashing water on her face helped remove the feeling of a layer of grime, and she spent a couple extra minutes brushing her teeth to feel as much of a real person that she could.

Kagome sighed.

"How bad do you think he's going to be?" She asked as Sango finished patting herself dry with the small hand towel.

"Oh, it'll take some convincing, but he probably won't take you back to Kaede's."

Kagome groaned, attempting to push herself to her feet, wincing terribly at the stretch in her legs. She leaned back against a tree as she waited for Sango to finish up.

"Still hurting?" Sango asked, and Kagome switched her weight from foot to foot.

"Yeah," she mumbled.

"It'll get better," Sango said, rising to her feet so easily and obviously pain-free. Kagome couldn't help her pang of jealousy.

"Why is it taking so long though?"

"You heard Kaede, healing is a process." They both headed back towards camp. "Give yourself some credit, Kagome. You've been through a lot." Sango reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

"I know."

"Good," Sango said, flashing her a smile. "Now, let's just hope that we've beaten Inuyasha back to camp."

They walked back through the trees into camp as Inuyasha landed on the opposite side, a handful of fish and a cleaned rabbit in his hands.

"Where were you two?" Inuyasha asked with a glower in Sango's direction.

"We didn't go far. Just to the stream and back," Kagome said, taking ginger steps towards the fire as Inuyasha started setting up the spits. She quickly lowered herself to the ground, hoping to avoid giving any evidence that she was in any amount of pain.

"I went with them!" Shippo announced proudly as he quietly crawled into her lap, and she struggled to not wince at the pressure on her already tender muscles.

Inuyasha sat back on his haunches while the meat cooked.

"You doing okay?" He asked, and she nodded quickly.

"Of course!" She chirped and promptly internally grimaced.

She really needed to reign in that chipper sound. It was going to give her away.

"You sure about that?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He didn't say anything, instead he stared, one eyebrow raised, for just a moment before turning back towards the fire to watch the meat. Kagome hoped that he wasn't going to make a big deal about it.

Kagome struggled to find a way to make polite conversation, but the more she tried, the more her mouth felt dry and her tongue like lead.

"So I'm thinking that we could make it to the next village before nightfall if we flew," Sango casually pointed out as she rolled up her blankets, packing them away safely.

"Probably," Inuyasha shrugged. "You good with that?" He asked, turning towards Kagome.

"Yeah, of course!" Okay, she really needed to rein in her happy voice, and she needed to pick up her gear and pack it away, but moving seemed like a generally terrible idea.

"You gonna pack up your stuff?" He asked, eyebrow raised at her lack of initiative. She looked back at her sleeping bag, and then at Sango for some sort of silent help, but Sango wasn't even looking at her.

Traitor.

Miroku wasn't even looking at her either.

Traitors every single one of them.

"I'll help!" Shippo offered, leaping off her lap and she only barely contained the grimace that it caused.

"Thanks, Shippo," she said, even though that was the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. If she just moved slowly, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

She started to push herself to her feet when a firm hand pressed lightly on her thigh, stilling her, and Inuyasha rose to his feet.

"I'll get it," he said.

"But I can—" She started, and he cut her off with a muted glare.

"You stay there."

He started rolling up her sleeping bag as Shippo helped him fold and wrap the straps around it.

Inuyasha returned to his seat next her a few moments later with a huff, pulling a fish from the fire, picking the skin off.

"I would've handled folding up my sleeping bag," she told him. "You didn't have to do that."

He turned his head to look at her as he handed her the skinned fish for her to eat.

"Eat your breakfast, Kagome," he ordered, pulling another fish for himself.

She smiled as he flicked the extra skin at Kirara who chirped and mewed over the feast before her.

A/N: So happy Thursday! I hope that you guys aren't disappointed with the chapter, since a lot didn't really happen here. But I felt like it was a chapter that needed to happen, especially since Kagome hasn't really been anywhere that wasn't a safe haven of sorts. I really debated on tossing this one out or keeping it, and I decided to keep it, so I hope that you feel the same. Anyway, enjoy!