It's poison, this love.
Nevertheless it's salvation from insanity.
Maybe just for him.
He prods her gently.
She sleeps a lot.
"Mn," she softly groans and shifts away from him.
In some ways it annoys him but in others it doesn't.
It's his compromise. She's unattainable in this way and he knows she dreams of things she's lost. Of red kosodes and golden eyes. He knows that in her dreams, she's still not his.
So he makes this reality work for him.
She's too far from him now. He makes the temperature drop and watches with fascination as the goose bumps of the chill rise and ripple across her smooth skin.
She shivers and he emits heat from his body, enticing her to follow the path of warmth he makes for her.
To come to him.
And she obeys.
"Kikyo," he croons softly when she spoons into his eagerly welcoming embrace.
Her face drops into a gentle frown and it displeases them both.
Fine. Another compromise.
"Kagome," he corrects himself.
As his reward, her sleeping body gives in to its crave for affection and she slides closer, clutching his sleeve tightly.
Could he really be blamed?
Same soul, technically. Nearly the same name. Only the mind has changed.
Sure, she's a duplicate, a replacement. But she's still treasured all the same.
Naraku enjoys his treasures. It comes in all forms. Jewelry, power, people, he admires all kinds, the root of his dying human heart always hungry for more.
He usually obtains them with little effort.
It was the same with her, his most prized gem.
The shepherd had upset the most important piece of his flock and the angry little lamb had once again wandered off from the fold.
Unaware to the group, his puppet eyes were always watching them and had seen her throw her tantrums many times, marching away to cool the angry flames that the dog always seemed to spark.
There was never any empathy, sympathy, or pity at the sight of her crying. Her tears didn't provoke any emotions to come forth. So for a long time he simply observed.
And one day, she'd walked off differently.
It was a calm saunter for one thing. Her shoulders were relaxed, her hands were unclenched, and her entire body lacked the usual tension.
What Inuyasha said to her, he had no idea but it was something that even caused the rest of their ensemble to eye him with a tenser look of disapproval than usual.
Inuyasha had raised a hand, almost prepared to go after her before he slowly reconsidered and dropped it, letting her go.
Kagome walked and walked and walked and Naraku followed and followed and followed, recognizing that calm stroll, that placid demeanor that had unexplored depth beneath those familiar eyes.
Now more than ever, she looked like her counterpart.
The same power, the same feel, the same face.
And beneath his skin, the same desire heated his flesh.
She stopped suddenly.
She turned in his direction.
She noticed him, staring directly at him through the masking pelt because his craving had tripped her senses and revealed him to her.
When those calm and unafraid burning eyes met his, it was too much for him.
Naraku moved. She was quick, but he was quicker. When his arms wrapped around her struggling torso and his cheek touched hers, he knew it was fool's gold.
But it glittered all the same.
And now here they lay, in a place he'd created only for them. It wasn't outside of time, not even he could do that, but it defied space so they moved endlessly, roaming through the land wrapped in a barrier that was only faintly traceable.
Because even after all this time, Inuyasha still searches for her.
And Naraku has come to accept that behind her eyelids, in a world that no longer exists, in a world that will never exist again, she's searching for him too.
She's awake but sluggish.
He keeps her that way because he's learned his lesson from the first, seventh, and twentieth time he let her regain full consciousness, hoping she'd submit.
Kagome, while a gentle soul, is an endless rebel and as long as she is aware, she will fight him no matter how much he can make life easier for her.
No matter how much pain he can save her from.
A part of him hates her like this because the longer she's awake, the more she starts to talk.
It's her voice that comforts him.
It's her words that don't.
"Inuyasha," she breathes, unable to do anything but blink slowly and run languid fingers across the bridge of her nose.
Now comes the worst part.
Naraku breathes deeply and let's himself melt away.
The dark clothing he prefers start to lighten and burn until they are as red as a blushing rose.
He shifts and changes and pains himself so that his skin is no longer ghostly white but slightly sun-kissed.
His hair ages to match the color of the full moon and his ears stretch and slither to the top of his head, becoming soft and pointed and white.
He lightens his irises until the gold burns with inner contempt at his new form. She mistakes it for the intensity she admires when her clouded gaze finally looks at him.
"What?" he answers in Inuyasha's voice.
Instantly, he hates himself.
"There's a shard," she yawns and curls cutely as she stretches, her uniformed shirt sliding upwards to reveal the untouched skin of her midsection. He hasn't worked up the nerve to embark there yet, "A big one."
Naraku smirks and touches the nearly whole pearl that has been fastened on a chain and laced around her neck, enthroned upon her throat.
His antipathies and dark longings cause swirls of black to appear under its glassy surface.
And her love counteracts it, causing opposing whirls of pink.
It sustains them both, keeping their bodies nourished and in shape. With the pearl, they are immortal.
With the pearl, she is his until the end of time.
"Where?" he teases her.
Kagome's expression becomes perplexed and she blinks her smoky eyes. Scrunching her nose at him she gives a lazy shrug and says "Dunno. East?"
Last time it was south. Before that, west and north. He hasn't heard east in a while. For some reason it pleases him, like a repeat of a play he hasn't seen for some time and doesn't mind watching again.
With only one word, she keeps his interest.
"Useless wench," he plays his part for her.
Annoyed, she turns his face away from him.
"Sit, boy." She says firmly.
Naraku slowly leans forward and hides his face in the crook of her neck, in the midst of her glistening yet inky tresses that have retained its scent even after all these months.
Once again, he wonders how she got it to smell like apples.
He gives a half-hearted grunt and lightly nips at the small shiver her body gives because his lips are grazing her skin.
Naraku sits up just in time to see the corner of her lips rise.
When she smiles, the heart that died inside him damn near overheats.
This time he doesn't feel so bad, so heartless. In this state, Kagome gets what she wants. He can tell by the way she shuts her eyes and breaths deeply as she falls back to sleep. She returns to an imagined world of friends and a love that isn't unrequited, eager to embark on their next venture.
She slips away from him again but leaves him a reward for his performance.
Her aura causes a happy rolling wave to wash over them both.
Naraku wastes no time. He pulls it into him, as much of it as he can. He savors it, rolls it around inside himself, letting it untwist his soul as much as possible before it fades and his soul resumes its unbending state until the next gift is bestowed upon him.
It's the best part about her, that power of hers.
The tingle, the pinpricking sensation of her love that doesn't belong to him. Of purity he has weakened so it only barely harms him. It hurts so good, that power.
He has become just as immersed in her wholesome and tender influence as she has become submerged in his deceptive and immobilizing miasma, never to surface from it again.
It's addictive. A drug. One that they will never give up because they can't.
It's poison, this love.
Nonetheless it's salvation from insanity.
Maybe for them both.