Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
Summary: Like a spider, he watches and waits until he is consumed with lust and envy, until he opens the door to evil.
Pairing: one-sided Onigumo/Kikyo
[dark things]
"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
Pablo Neruda
(Love Sonnet XVII, 100 Love Sonnets)
:::
He first loved Kikyo in the darkness of an empty cave.
He was Onigumo then, a wounded bandit and outlaw, half-blind and swathed in bandages, all feeling in his limbs gone, his skin burning and tearing as if he were being spitted, but he was alive.
He was alive, though he could not move on his pallet of straw, could not strain his fingers to reach the radiant face that gleamed above him, could not roll on his side to relieve the monotony of lying against the ground, his good eye always facing the dip and curve of the cave's roof, a monotony that was only broken when the morning sun danced into the cave and stopped short of touching him with her warmth.
He first loved Kikyo in the morning, when she came, her pants rustling slightly, and knelt beside him, changing his bandages and laying new poultices on the hurting and dying parts of him. She was radiant in the morning light, beautiful as a treasured bride in a king's castle, with a beauty that blinded him and stabbed him with the sharp edge of the knowledge that he could never have her.
He could only desire her, could only think of her in the darkness, could only touch her smooth skin and feel her gasps from his rough ministrations in his dreams.
He first loved Kikyo in secret, without knowing why.
:::
Her hands were cool against his face, and her hair shone like lacquer in the morning light.
He moved his lips, his swollen lips, but no words came out. He wanted to say her name, to make her look at him, but all he managed was a grunt.
"Are you alright?" she asked, taking the grunt as a sign of pain.
He tried to nod but could not move.
"Take it easy," she said, standing.
He could only see the red hems sliding against her feet. How he longed to move, to dance his fingers up her legs and to teach her to move with him.
"I need to go now," Kikyo said. She fingered the jewel she wore around her neck. "I'm meeting Inuyasha today."
Inuyasha. Always Inuyasha. Onigumo felt a burst of anger flood his veins, felt the need to kick at something, to punch something. But he could not move, and he could only watch from the corner of his eye, silent and pained, as Kikyo left the cave, bringing the warmth with her.
:::
He first loved Kikyo in the darkness of an empty cave. He first loved Kikyo in secret, without knowing why, the way one loves a shadow that slips just out of grasp.
He still lusted after her, now, and he wanted to move, to be able to run after her and press her to him. And so he dreamt up a plan, a plan that should never have come into fruition had the young priestess not decided to heal the wounded bandit.
He called to the demons in the area, offering himself up as a sacrifice to them, for them to take and to devour, for them to knife open and stitch shut. A vessel he was to be, and in return, he would gain a new body, a body that could walk, a body that could touch and caress and possess.
He called, the demons answered, and in the aftermath, a young woman went up in flames, and her young lover was sealed in deep sleep to an ancient tree. Onigumo himself was lost and buried, put to sleep inside a dark mind, his own dark love simmering for decades.
:::
In this second life, he was Onigumo, but he was also Naraku, shrouded in sin and cowardice, power tingling through his veins, his might a legend throughout the land.
In this life, too, Onigumo's heart beat strongly within Naraku, so strongly, with the desire for Kikyo blazing anew, though she was but a figure of clay given life for a short span of time.
He had always wanted to desecrate her, to turn her into a monster like him. But Naraku overruled him, in the end.
:::
Death came for Onigumo at last, slowly and surely.
He first loved Kikyo in the darkness of an empty cave. He first loved Kikyo in secret, without knowing why, the way one loves a shadow that slips just out of grasp.
And now, stranded in the darkness of the jewel, he knew that his end had come, finally come. And Kikyo was not waiting beyond the veil, for she had died by his hands and his punishment was to never see her again, whether living or dead.