calmNot Alone
It was late afternoon. He found her in the garden, tucked up in an out-of-the-way corner beside a boulder and shaded by an old willow tree. It wasn’t hard to find her - she always came there when she felt overwhelmed, or tired or grieved.
He gently laid a hand on her shoulder. “Kagome?”
Kagome turned around and looked up at him with sad, red-rimmed eyes, “I’m sorry. Sometimes it just gets to be too much.” She gave him a wry, fleeting smile. “You would think after being a healer this long . . . ”
“Feh,” he said sitting down next to her. “Some things always are hard. It was that farmer?”
She nodded. “The one they found down by the river. As far as they could tell, some bandits had robbed him and left him for dead.” Kagome leaned into her husband’s shoulder. “It’s amazing he lived as long as he did. There wasn’t much I could do besides give him something for the pain.”
InuYasha slipped his arm around her, and said nothing, but pulled her close, remembering what bandits almost took from him. They sat there quietly for a time, lost in their thoughts.
Kagome broke the silence. “Why?” she asked. “Why did they do it?”
“Hell if I know,” he said, letting his hand glide over her hair.
“He held my hand and called me Kwannon before he died.” Kagome sighed. “But he was so delirious, we don’t know who he was, even.”
“At least someone found him and brought him here,” InuYasha offered. “He didn’t die alone. He knew someone cared.”
“Yeah,” she replied. Leaning further into his embrace, she said, “Hold me, InuYasha. I don’t want to be alone.”
“Me either,” he said. And kissing her gently on the forehead, he lifted her up and took her back to the house.
A/N The bandit reference is a reference to my story Future Legend. Kwannon is the Buddhist Bodhisatva (something like a saint) of Mercy, often seen as a woman.
