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 61

Was she too hard on him?

Kagome stood there for a long time, still as a weeping willow with her hair in the breeze as she only just barely managed to hold herself together. Her words had been so awful, but what else was she supposed to say to someone who had so deeply betrayed her trust? She'd believed that he had honestly come along to help her and Toga get through their adventure, but really he'd just tagged along to help himself.

By killing Toga.

Killing Toga to avenge a fifteen year old wound.

Only Saburo never actually acted on that. He hadn't followed through with his plan. He hadn't killed Toga; instead he ended up being supportive and generous and then he did every single thing the demon had asked of him.

Every single painful thing.

But... he'd lied to her. So easily he'd lied.

She shrunk in on herself as she felt her anger and sorrow begin to wage a migraine-inducing war in her head against all of the thoughts and pleasant memories that might have redeemed him. The artificial bundle of fur-sticks glared accusingly at her from where it sat against the rock wall of the alcove beside Saburo's half-finished pit. A new doubt loomed like the clouds of a sandstorm over his every word and action, it snuffed her own judgement and shadowed all of the bonds they'd forged since she first asked him for a shovel and a bow. That doubt quickly eroded her usually chipper and forgiving attitude to a gritty dust.

Had any of it been real?

Tearing her eyes from the prints Saburo left behind in the snow, Kagome shook her head and gave her arms one final squeeze before retracing her steps back to the pine tree. There she begin packing away her things.

…

When Saburo returned to that spot sometime later with a load of old, dead wood under one arm and a hesitation in his step, Kagome's things were nowhere to be found. He gave a grimace, a sigh, and looked away before dropping his haul and dragging his heavy body across the clearing to finish his hearth.

He hasn't expected her to stay, not really. But there'd been a tiny flickering candlelight of hope in the center of his chest that wished she would.

It didn't take much at all to extinguish that flame and sink him to his knees.

Togashimaru had been right from the very beginning.

He truly was a helpless fool.

…

Sparks of a roaring flame popped and sizzled up the rocks and into the lazy evening air as Saburo rested in the warmth beside it. Eyes closed and breath slow, he listened to his surroundings.

Being out there alone was a much different experience than travelling with companions. Without the distraction of conversation, the shadows of the woods seemed to keep undulating. It was spooky. Unsettling. And he hadn't yet been able to get himself to fall asleep, not with that movement at his peripheral. Even less with all the noises that kept nipping at his earlobes. Snow was supposed to dampen sounds, but the stone wall at his back did just the opposite— it made everything echo from out beyond the touch of light, from the cavernous, carnivorous night.

Squirrels and birds knocked bricks of snow from branches.

Barren twigs swayed in the breeze, creaking about back and forth and back.

The long arm of a pine ran its claw-like needles across the cliff face, carving poetry in the rock.

Scritch.

Scritch.

Scritch.

Snap!

A new sound gave a crack, startling Saburo from his already anxious tizzy. Pulse rising and palms sweating cold, he reached for his hammer and pulled himself up to stand at attention.

He'd gotten himself into a pretty stupid situation, hadn't he? Driving off his only comrade and winding up alone in the wilderness. He wasn't the wilderness type of guy. How was he supposed to survive out there? He didn't have the right skills to feed himself, let alone defend himself from invisible threats seen only by demons and priestesses.

Saburo bit his lip and his grip on the handle tightened as he scoured the dark for signs of movement.

What if another one of those mountain moryo showed up? There wasn't a burnin' snowflake of a chance that he'd be able to stand up against something like that. All big and burly and toothy. He didn't belong out there alone to face such burly and toothy types of things!

And yet there he was. All thanks to his own festering guilt.

Instead of relying on Kagome so much before and bickering with Togashimaru, he should have been learning from them. He should have been more proactive about picking up survival tactics and camping knowhow, because the bare basics were only going to get him so far without her.

But hey, at least he knew how to set a camp, right?

Another snap yanked his attention and Saburo fumbled his hammer to reach a hand for his dagger instead. A hammer? Seriously? What was he expecting to be able to do with a dang hammer? He supposed he could bash a skull in if he really needed to, but that meant getting blood on the tool and he rather liked his hammer being clean and murder-free. His dagger, though? His dagger had already seen death.

A bush rustled.

Focus, Saburo! He scolded himself as he awkwardly wielded both of his weapons and placed his back to the stone wall. No, his skills weren't great, but he could survive this. He would fight to survive whatever the night threw at him. And maybe, just maybe, if he returned to Edo victorious and unscathed, he could prove once and for all that he wasn't completely incompetent.

Prove it to his family, prove it to himself, and prove it to her.

Disturbingly close, another tree rustled and knocked a boulder of snow to the ground.

Saburo jumped and spun.

Finally a shadowy figure pushed aside one of the pine's thick lower branches to invade his campsite. The blacksmith faced it with a clenched jaw and fisherman's knots twisting his entrails. Tension staked him straight.

But when he saw who it was he forgot how to breathe.

His brandished weapons fell away to his side as Kagome stepped into the light of the fire, her heavy pack slung over one shoulder with her bow and wet slush threaded through tousled raven hair. He had to drop both the hammer and the dagger when she tossed him the feathery carcass of a fat pheasant.

"You're cooking tonight." Saying that and only that, the priestess dropped her bag, settled against the warm rocks near the hearth, and closed her eyes to block out the sharp firelight.

Saburo stammered, then shut his gaping mouth. He let his misty fear and fake hubris be replaced by a relief so pure it was sweeter than honey.

"Sure thing, Miss Kagome." He said. "I can do that."

…

Scritch.

That campsite sure was riddled with odd scritches, wasn't it? Heavy with sleep, Saburo brushed at his ear to swat away the nagging little noise.

Scritch scritch scritch, the sound kept on like a squirrel digging away at the ground.

He pulled his jacket over his head and rolled over in an attempt to keep sleeping, but when there was a sharper rattle followed by Kagome quietly hissing his name, the lumbering human had no choice but to rouse.

"Hmm?" Saburo groggily untangled himself and squinted at the young woman in the glow of dim embers.

"Saburo, wake up and grab it!" Kagome hiss-whispered again from her nest beneath the pine tree. He looked to where she was pointing.

Her backpack?

"Grab what?" He felt foolish whispering back. Exhaustion hung over his mind.

"The spirit imp!" She inched forward. "Grab the imp before it takes off with something dangerous."

Imp?

What imp?

"…Inside?"

"No, it's on top!"

Saburo peered again at the big yellow pack. "…There's nothin' there." Two of the flaps were open, but there weren't any mysterious little feral creatures on or near it. Tired and concerned, he gave her a look. "You okay, Miss Kagome?"

Was she seeing things? A nightmare?

Cursing under her breath, Kagome motioned for him to stay still as she herself froze. Then after a pause she began to creep forward from her hiding spot. A leopard on the prowl for prey, she stayed hunkered in the snow as she moved closer and closer to him and the backpack.

Well, that was weird. Even for her.

The blacksmith was about to yawn when suddenly again came that irritating scratching sound—scritch scritch.

It was loud. Close.

Scritch scritch.

And itwascoming right from the backpack.

Oh, he realized. It wasn't Kagome having issues. The issue was him.

This was one of those creatures that he didn't have enough spiritual power to be able to see, wasn't it?

Yet, as much sense as that made in light of all he'd been witness too, Saburo's logical side still tried to fight back against it. How were you supposed to blindly believe in something standing beside you if it was literally invisible? There were so many other things that could have been making that sound, so many branches and critters—

His's rationalizations were cut short when he saw something impossible.

Right there, before his very nose, the mundane human man watched as the familiar shape of a thin gold hairpiece rose in the air from the front pocket of Kagome's bag. Catching the light of the dying fire and shrouded in a strange green glow, the fan of the pin visibly shook back and forth. Its tassels tinkled together before the whole thing rose higher.

It had him utterly dumbfounded. "Er…Miss Kagome… Yer pins floatin' away…"

He heard her gasp.

"Grab it!" There was panic in her prompt. Then she said it louder. "Grab it!"

All at once they lunged; Saburo reached for the key to the priestess' return home, Kagome leapt for the little demon that was unseen to the blacksmith, and the imp made for its glorious, invisible escape.

In the end, it was the imp who won their contest of reflexes. It bounded off into the dark of night like a monkey from hell, all while toting away its sparkling new prize.

"Damnit Saburo!" Kagome snapped and scrambled up from their tangle of limbs. "You let him get away!"

Saburo rubbed his head where her elbow had knocked him. He huffed. "It ain't my fault—I couldn' see th' dang thing."

"Yeah? Well, you're just—!" She bit out a high pitched growl and pitched away to hike up her damp skirts and grab her shoes. "You're just so useless! You wouldn't have been able to see him even if you were awake and keeping watch. And what happened to that, huh? You were supposed to wake me before you fell asleep!"

"Hey now!" He started to protest as he got up to walk with her across the clearing. "Th' night was quiet. You needed th' sleep. I didn't think—"

"No." Kagome put her foot down. "You didn't think." She didn't look back at him as she crouched for her quiver of arrows. "Look. I need that hairpin, so I'm going after it. But you're staying here. I seriously don't have the patience to be babysitting you right now. Not when you can't even help me right."

She might as well have jabbed one of those arrows straight into his gut.

Saburo lowered his arms and looked down at the dying fire. Her backpack sat there beside it, opened and rifled through. Around it were the tiny, scampering prints of a bipedal creature. The thing must have been no bigger than a cat. He reached into the snow to pick up Kagome's bottle of painkillers from where they'd been tossed, and by the time he straightened back up she was gone once more from the campsite.

Muscles tightened, a vein in his cheek strained. In a sudden spring of action Saburo swiped a thick log from the top of their woodstack to chuck angrily into the forest.

Except it never left his hold.

Looking to his hand, the tension released from his grip. Saburo sighed. He stepped over to the fire and dropped the log onto it before feeding it with another. Then he tucked the bottle of pills back where they belong, swung Kagome's heavy bag onto his back, and followed along after the peeved priestess into the woods.

…

Stupid.

The priestess bit her lip.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

She gritted her heels into the snow as she ran. Her hair and bow and the trailing fabric of the sleeves that she didn't have enough time to tie back kept snagging on the bony fingers of branches, but she persisted. The wind whipped her face in a way that stung, disguising the emotions of her outburst behind physical pain; that helped her stay on task as she followed the sneaky little thief of an imp further into the forest.

Further and further until they hit a literal wall.

"Hah!" Kagome scoffed a little manically when she caught sight of the high, rocky sheer growing up before them. "End of the line, buddy! There's nowhere left for you to run! You've got to the count of three to drop that gold or I'll be turning you into an ugly hood ornament!"

The little green demon found itself cornered within the shadow of a cliff that blocked the moon from view. It patted the stone for a hand hold, but every potential knob crumbled away to rust and grit beneath its claws. Realizing the futility of the climb, the knee-high beast turned to hiss at the priestess, clutching the shiny new treasure to its bare chest.

Kagome lifted an arrow to emphasize her threat.

"One." She started counting, hoping that the imp wasn't smart enough to notice that the trees between them were still too dense for her to make an accurate shot. "…Two."

Before she could make it to the dreaded three, however, the imp made a crazed, half-ditched leap of faith. From the wall to a log to a branch, it sprang and twisted between twigs, leaping right towards Kagome's raised weapon and the hands holding it aloft.

It was fast. Kagome shrieked. Frazzled, she loosed her arrow high into the rock face before ducking to shield her eyes from sharp talons. The imp screeied and vaulted from the black of Kagome's hair to the trunk of an old oak that stood behind her. It scrambled up and up to get away, far from the human's reach and safe from arrows in the tangled limbs of the canopy.

Incredulous, Kagome screamed after it.

"No!" She dropped her quiver to the ground and threw her bow against the tree. "No, no, no! You get down here! That's not fair! That's not how this was supposed to go!" Tears blurred her vision as she found a pebble to chuck at the demon mocking her from above. It missed by a mile. "Getting home… This was supposed to be the easy part! It's just a walk through the woods, Kagome, you can handle a walk through the woods! Yeah? Well, obviously I can't!" Her fourth rock fell from her fingers before she could throw it properly and in an exhausted breath, Kagome felt her temper plummet. "I can't do this anymore, Inuyasha. …I need you."

Hugging her arms around her shoulders, the priestess finally began to feel the cold through her clothes.

"I give up." She whispered.

Those words clung to her tongue. Astringent, bitter, awful.

If Inuyasha had been there to see her, she would have been embarrassed by them. If Toga had been there, she would have curled up beside and counted the stars to forget about them.

But neither of them were there.

Obviously taking a great pleasure in the priestess' misery, the spirit imp hooted in triumph. It shook branches, sending the added insult of a blustery hailstorm down around her. Even though the chunks of snow and ice weren't big enough to bruise, each tiny, pelting bullets chipped away at her outer shell until she was bare and vulnerable.

Like a small baby bird, left exposed and alone in the dead of winter, Kagome slumped to her knees.

Helpless.

She'd just about lost all of her fight when suddenly there was an odd snap. The imp shrieked, pained. And then, as if it were a gift from the heavens, the golden hairpin fell from the branches above. It landed right in front of Kagome, point first striking the ground. Holding straight and alert, the heron fan and its delicate golden tassels stood like a proud little flag against the barren frozen land of miniature, forest floor tundra.

"Yer not givin' up." She heard Saburo's voice speak from not too far away. "The Miss Kagome I know isn't one ta just give up."

The young priestess glanced up just as he was reaching down to salvage her longbow and arrows from the base of the tree she'd thrown them at. Ashamed, she looked away.

"Well maybe you don't know me well enough yet."

Saburo shrugged and stepped over to where she was heaped. "Maybe not." He replied before offering her a large calloused hand.

Long strands of his loose black hair fell over his shoulder, blown by the wind to her line of sight; that was weird considering how consistently he'd been keeping it in the ponytail. Curiosity made her lift her eyes to search his disheveled appearance.

"I told you not to follow me."

"I did anyway."

"Your hair tie… Did you fling a scrunchie at the imp?"

"Sorta… Hair pins don't usually glow in th' dark." The blacksmith blushed and scratched behind his ear with the limb of her bow. "What's say we get back to th' fire?"

She took him in for a moment, eyes askance and rosy cheeks scraped from branches. One particularly gnarled twig was caught in his bangs and would need some coaxing to get out. Her heavy yellow backpack rested tight and secure to his back.

After some time Kagome accepted his outstretched hand.

"Yeah. I guess… let's head back."

…

"I'm not Togashimaru, ya know."

"What?" Kagome's bangs brushed her eyelashes as she looked up at him.

"And I'm not like yer warrior friends from th' future, neither."

"Well, yeah… I know that."

"Do you?" Saburo asked. "'Cause yer real quick ta bark at me lately when I don't live up to yer expectations." He sighed and tried to rake his hair out of his face, only to get a finger caught on the twig in his bangs. Saburo cursed and let it go. "I get that yer upset with me fer lyin'—yer right ta be… But that doesn't make it burn any less when ya treat me like an invalid."

The priestess' steps fell away from his and when Saburo noticed he stopped to face her. The skin across Kagome's nose and cheeks were splotches with a red nip from the chill, and her arms were wrapped tight to her damp outer kimono. She wasn't looking at him.

"I'm sorry." She eventually said, so quietly that he hardly heard her. "My mouth has a mind of its own when I'm upset. And when I'm overwhelmed and sad… and when I'm completely terrified. But mostly when…" She shook her head. "Everything just came crashing down on me all at once and you were the closest target to take it out on. I didn't mean any of it, really, I just—I don't know. I shouldn't be making excuses."

"You were angry." He pointed out without accusation.

"I was pissed." She admitted, both her words and the grip on her sleeves tightening. "I'm still pissed. It's gotten to the point where it just keeps building and building, but I can't even remember what the original trigger was. Was it you? Was it when Toga lied about the poison? Izayoi, for trapping us here? Or was it because of me? Because I couldn't keep all of my promises? It's a stone that keeps gathering moss and won't quit."

He held up a gentle hand. "It's alright, you don't gotta try and explain. I know anger. I know it real well, how it festers and boils… But Miss Kagome, I learned fer me it's insecurity that feeds th' kiln."

Flushing, the young woman looked down at her feet. When she didn't respond, he strode forward and draped his warm jacket over her trembling shoulders.

"Yer not them either. Ya know that?"

Confused, she met his gaze. "Huh?"

"Yer friends… Togashimaru. Yer not them, yer Kagome. You don't gotta be tryin' ta live up to th' pedestal you put them all on. It's okay fer you ta be scared and lost and wantin' ta give up. You've fought hard and made it through this far on yer grit and warrior priestess' spirit, but I won't judge you fer just bein' Kagome fer a bit."

A tear slid down Kagome's cheek as she nodded.

Then Saburo offered over her longbow. As soon as he did, as soon as he held back her weapon and destiny without expectation or bitterness, Kagome knew everything was going to be okay. They were going to be okay.

And as soon as she accepted it and took her first steps forward back to their campsite, she knew that he had been right. She wasn't the type to give up. This journey wasn't over yet and she wasn't going to drop everything so easily just because she was battling a few inner demons she couldn't see. She'd get through it and continue fighting, no matter what else fate swung at her.

Because she was Kagome Higurashi, and Kagome Higurashi was capable of holding on through hell itself, so long as she had the support of a friend by her side.

Chapter End