Rewritten and edited not a lot new. Hope you enjoy; much love for you all. Keva
xx
Naraku stood in the doorway staring up at the dark star speckled sky. The winter air was frigid as it swept across his bared flesh but he didn't notice. Just like so many other things in his life he never noticed, never took the time to notice.
The sound of teeth chattering caused him to glance over his shoulder at the being curled up in the bed. He silently closed the door then made his way back to the bed where he stood staring down at the female curled up beneath the blankets.
So much love she had for him as she had told him over and over again. Love was a wasted emotion and one he had no knowledge of. Never had knowledge of it until he met her. She was practically overflowing with the emotion.
He gathered his clothing from the corner and silently dressed all the while keeping his eyes locked onto the being curled up in the bed. Once his deep blue haori was tied perfectly in place he moved to the bed and gathered up the girl blankets and all into his strong arms before leaving the small hut.
He flew across the land until he came to an old well and once he was hovering strategically over it he deposited her into its dark depths. He didn't watch the magic take her away nor did he care to watch. He'd seen it enough to know how it worked he didn't need to see it again.
He uncurled his fingers from around the small jar of shards he removed from the miko and stared down at them. They were the beautiful tainted purple color he enjoyed seeing so much; his color… his evil.
He was so close to completing the precious stone and becoming complete to be the one true ruler of the lands. All would bow down before him and beg for mercy a mercy that would never come. Yes his dreams were quickly coming to fruition.
xx
The wind swept madly though his midnight hair as he bared his back to the horde of demons hovering behind him. He didn't move, didn't flinch, made no notice of the many demons entering his body. Another bout of absorbing lowly, mindless, youkai just to maintain his existence. This is what truly caused his anger having to depend on worthless youkai to live while so many others were complete; it was disgusting.
His sickly looking baboon pelt remained pooled around his waist as he stared out over the valley cast in the pale light of a dying moon. The winter air once again attacked his bared skin but he paid no mind to it. The pain of his incomplete existence was far greater than the pins and needles of the winter air cutting through his flesh.
A deep breath expanded his lungs causing a small puff of smoke to escape his lips as he exhaled. What a lonely existence he lived not a part of the complete beings walking the lands, only part of a disgusting human thief, part demon, part alive, part dead. Where did he fit in to this world?
All feared him, hated him, wanted him dead, wanted to see his blood spilled on the lands he destroyed. Yet he would never bleed blood didn't run through his veins only the essence senseless youkai polluted his body.
He jabbed the tip of his clawed thumb into his forefinger causing black poison to slowly ooze out of the small wound. What it would be like to see the crimson of real blood seeping from his body? Would wounds hurt worse; less? Would he even notice the difference?
He flung his hand out to the side flinging the single black drop of poison from his finger. Fantasizing about being real was a waste of time. He should be focusing on the one thing that would grant him his true desire the shikon no tama.
He pulled the tainted jewel from his chest and stared at its sickly purple color. Only seven more shards and it would be done after so long of trying to complete it it would finally be complete.
If it wasn't for her he most likely wouldn't be as close to completing his desire as he now was.
"It will never happen."
He didn't turn to face the being whose quieted voice had suddenly entered his ears. He knew she was there the whole time and could have killed her at any moment.
Had he had the desire to do so.
Yet she was no more a threat to him than the cold winter's wind. "Iie; it will." His indigo lined lids gently fell closed when cold hands landed flat on his back trailing over the scar that was a shameful reminder to who he once was.
"That is not of what I speak." She whispered as she pressed her cold cheek to his even colder back. "I will always come back."
"Hai; I know." He responded to both her statements with another deep breath. He slowly opened his eyes when a small hand trailed over his shoulder and cold purple fingers uncurled revealing three more shards to his precious jewel. He wrapped his hand around hers feeling the deep chill within her flesh. "You should not be here."
A single tear trailed down her cheek landing on his flaw and rolled down his back. "I have no where else to go."
"Return home." He ordered just above a dark whisper.
Kagome closed her eyes squeezing out more tears and pressed her lips tightly together to stop the sob from escaping. She slipped her other arm around his chest and held him tightly to her. "There is nothing there for me anymore." She said in a choked whisper.
"There is nothing here for you either."
She nuzzled his tear soaked back with her tear stained cheek. "There is nothing for me anywhere."
He removed the shards from her frozen palm and fused them to the nearly complete jewel. "You remain I will destroy you."
Kagome sighed deeply and opened her tear filled eyes. "This past is linked to my future. What difference will now or later make?"
He pulled her arm and maneuvered her into his lap where he wrapped them both into his pelt.
Kagome leaned back against his chest and stared out over the trees of the forest below barely illuminated by a pale moon. Little puffs of smoke escaped her pale lips with every breath she took and she wished she could vanish into nothingness with them.
He buried his face into her hair. "Why do you help me?"
Kagome slowly closed her eyes then slowly opened them before she took a deep breath. "I just want it to end… all of it." She said the last part in a barely audible whisper. She snuggled closer to his body that was already warmed from the pelt. "I'm tired of searching and fighting. I'm tired of being…" She trailed off as she didn't want to finish that sentiment.
"A copy." He finished for her.
"Hai." She whispered back. "What will you do once you have completed it and fulfilled all your dreams?" Her eyes watched the moon as it drew closer to the high peaks of the mountains in the distance.
He didn't answer because he didn't know. What would he do? He would no longer be a mass of screaming youkai. No longer would he be considered incomplete. He would be whole, a complete being, free from the madness that attempted to drive his mind to insanity.
But most of all he would be free of that vile ningen's heart.
"You will go mad from loneliness."
He tightened his grip around her slightly as he breathed in deep of her scent. Cold winter's wind and lavender permeated his senses. He knew she was right and this is why he kept her instead of killing her. She always thought the things that never once crossed his mind forcing him to bend and mold his plans in new ways and forms. "Perhaps." He whispered against her midnight head. "Perhaps ultimate destruction will not come from my hands."
She cuddled deeper into the pelt against his hot flesh when the cold wind picked up and snapped its razor sharp teeth at her. "Iie it will." She locked her fingers with his and held him tight to her afraid he might vanish at any moment. "Your dark desires will allow no less."
Sometimes he wanted to kill her for her keen perceptions as they made his mind swirl in contemplation. Yet at the same time this was why he kept her by his side when she would come to him. "Do you wish to go before them?"
His voice was dark and deadly to her ears but it didn't faze her in the least. She had grown accustomed to his darkness over the last year since she first came to him offering to do anything for him. If only to just end the madness of her long seven year journey.
With her friends they were getting nowhere. For every step they would take forward in their own goals Inuyasha would throw them five backwards due to his obsession with the dead priestess. Kikyo had cost them so much in their journeys with her divided loyalties that eventually she grew tired of it all. It took a few months of analyzing both sides of the game for her to make the decision that would cost her everything. "Iie," she whispered as her eyes fell closed. "I want you to decide and for you to do it. " She sighed sadly as new tears streamed down her cheeks. "When we are alone while you hold me so you will be my last memory."
Truly he wasn't all that sure he wanted to kill her. She understood him as well as he understood himself knew what he was and what truly lay behind his crimson depths. She didn't look at him like he was a monster, she didn't pity him, nor did she truly hate him. She was the only one who understood why he wanted to become whole and she understood it as she too was incomplete.
She turned her head to face him and pressed her cold lips to his. "Promise me." She whispered against his lips before pulling him into a deep kiss of her own desires.
He locked his arms tighter around her small body as he plundered her hot little cavern. She was his first kiss, the first he took pleasures of the body with, and she would be the last.
Kagome broke the kiss and rose to her feet after a small struggle against his tight hold upon her. She gave him a small sad smile before she walked past him and vanished into the darkness of the shadowy forest her last words echoing through his head.
'Promise you will do it when you become whole so that I can remember what it was like to be complete.'
He sat there maintaining his vigil on the slowly coming to life forest below as the first rays of the winter's sun peaked over the mountains. He would keep his promise to her… perhaps. Of all the things he was sure of when it came to her everything was a dark haze of uncertainty.
When he allowed her to come to his side he permitted it with the sole purpose of tainting her pure soul and bending her to his will. Now he had to wonder which one of them was tainted and which wasn't. Did she fall into his dark charms or did he fall into hers? Which one of them was truly evil?
Good and evil both lived on the same side of a sword's blade. Neither truly pure in their intentions and could be intermingled amongst each other. What he considered good another could consider evil. So was he on the side of good or evil? Did he even fit into either category or did he just linger on edge of a meaningless existence waiting to fall to one side or the other?
It was a never ending circle of riddles that could never be answered. Perhaps when he completed the jewel all his questions would be answered or at the very least quieted in his mind.
xx
Kagome laid across the bed width wise with one leg draped over her dark lover's hip and the other bent with her foot buried under his thigh.
A lightly tanned hand gently trailed up the long creamy thigh draped over his hip. "Would you like it to be this day?"
Kagome shuddered from the touch. "Iie; you are not complete… yet." She stretched her arm backwards over her head and stuck her hand into the top of her bag. Her fingers curled around the object sitting on the top of all her stuff and withdrew the small jar attached to a thin chain. "The last three." She whispered as she dangled the jar in front of his face.
Naraku eyed the three shards in the jar. "How?"
"He gave them to me willingly."
He knew who she was talking about as the wolf prince was the only obstacle between him and his completion.
"Your dark dreams can now come true." She whispered as she dropped the jar to the bed since he wasn't taking it from her. "As will mine."
He stared at the slightly tainted shards the effect of his essence soiling her soul. "You want your end to come." He said keeping his eyes on the shards and slightly narrowed them when they darkened even more with her response.
"Yes."
He pulled the nearly complete jewel from his chest and set the dark purple tainted stone upon her flat belly. As it rolled with every breath she took it grew an even darker shade of purple.
Kagome rolled her eyes down to the stone on her stomach. "Only a pure miko can return it to its untainted pink." Her eyes moved up to his face. "I love you." She whispered with a sad smile.
Naraku looked up at her at her words knowing exactly what she was thinking before he moved his eyes back to the stone. He watched it roll around her belly before he shattered the jar and placed the last three shards on her flesh next to the jewel. With her next breath the stone rolled over the shards fusing itself into completion.
He knew she wasn't pure he took that from her himself. However he had no idea that she was so tainted that her true colors were almost as dark as his.
There was a looming threat hanging over them as their eyes remained locked onto the purple gem.
Kagome closed her eyes and released silent tears. She knew exactly what would happen if a wish was made on this impure jewel she had known it would come to this all along. "I will go." She whispered eyes still gently sealed shut.
Naraku looked up at her. "You will sacrifice yourself for my desires?" He watched as her head lightly nodded her answer.
He grabbed the jewel from her stomach and moved atop her slipping his naked body between her thighs. "You knew all along." He whispered darkly as he stared down at her withdrawn face with eyes still closed. Again her head bobbed in the affirmative.
"It was the only way to complete you." She whispered as she opened her eyes and stared up at him.
"The death you seek will not come for you there." He pointed out knowingly.
"No; it won't. It is for you that I sacrifice myself into the dark abyss of loneliness within the jewel."
He locked the hand that held the jewel within hers. "You do this for love or your own selfishness."
Kagome locked stares with his deep crimson before answering. "Both."
He buried his face into her neck and nipped harshly at her flesh as his hard length found her entrance. The hand locked into his grasped tighter against his fingers as her other hand tangled tightly into the silk sheets.
He slowly rocked into her body pulling sweet moan after sweet moan from her beautiful lips. Her back arched off the bed causing her hard nipples to rub against his bared chest as her sweet mewl of release blanketed him in euphoric bliss forcing him to his own end.
He found her lips with his own and made sweet love to her hot little cavern as he tightened his grip on her hand. He pressed the jewel tightly between their locked palms causing her to hiss against the pressure.
While his throbbing need still lay buried deep in her core and his tongue plundering her hot cavern he made his wish maintaining his tight hold upon her.
There wasn't much to his wish only an alteration to one word. That one word would throw the jewel off balance and either kill them both or grant them both their true desires. Whatever the outcome he would accept as either way he would no longer be living this false existence nor would she.
Kagome opened her eyes and stared at him when he broke their kiss. She was truly surprised to still be there with him. She felt him make his wish and expected to awake in the darkness of the tainted jewel yet she was still here with him. "Did you not make your wish?" She asked with brows slightly drawn in confusion.
"Hai." He answered then moved their clasped hands in between their faces. He released her hand and stared at the clear stone rolling about in her gently shaking palm.
Kagome brought her hand down to her face and stared at the gem in her hand then snapped her eyes to his. "What did you wish for?"
"Our completion." He answered with a pointed finger to the window.
Kagome rolled out from under him and scrambled off the bed to get to the window. Flinging it open her fist went to her mouth as she bit back a hard sob that wanted to escape.
Naraku came up behind her and wrapped his strong arms around her shaking form. "Is this not what you wanted?"
Kagome shook her head. "You're not supposed to be here." She turned to face him her face broken and soaked with tears. "Why are you here?"
"You brought me here with you." He answered as he stared out through the window to the purple haze of the tainted jewel that now surrounded them.
"What did you wish for?" She demanded forcing his crimson eyes down to broken angry blues.
"For us to be complete together."
She gasped like she had just been hit in the chest as she shook her head madly from side to side. "No!" She cried out in a soul shattering scream.
He did not understand why she was so angry with his wish. He was certain that she wanted them to be together or was it all just a rouse; a shameful suicide on her part? He grabbed her shoulders sharply digging his sharp deadly claws deeply into her soft flesh. "What goes on here!" He growled into her face. "You do not desire me to be here with you?"
Kagome stared up at him. "Don't you understand? Do you not know what placing us both here has done?"
What in seven hells was she talking about? He didn't understand she was talking like a mad woman. "Explain." He hissed deadly.
Her eyes slowly closed then opened just as slowly before she answered. "Had you sealed me away into the jewel alone I would have been freed upon my birth in the future." She sighed a deep shuddering sigh. "My future was created by your hands. You are the one who brought my parents together for the sole purpose of my birth and now… now… we will both be trapped here for eternity."
Naraku glared at her with deadly rage in his deep crimson eyes. "Why did you not tell me that?" He demanded with a hard shake to her fragile form.
"I couldn't. The jewel forbid me to do so." She sobbed as she fell against him and sobbed heavily into his chest. "That damned curs-ed thing has cost so many so much and now it cost us both our lives and freedom." She whimpered against him.
Naraku wrapped his arms around her as he understood why she couldn't tell him about the workings of the jewel. "This is why you helped me." Her head nodded against his chest. "You found my future as well as yours in your own time." Again her head bobbed against him.
His lips pulled up into a dark smirk. He always knew she was hiding something from him when it came to the jewel and with a little time and thought he figured out a way for him to force her to tell him what she knew.
He withdrew from her mind and opened his eyes staring down at her serene face lost in her slumber. Now he was posed with a whole new set of problems namely what to do about the completed jewel. By his estimation were he to seal her away now he would have to wait almost five hundred years to get her back. That was nothing to him but for her it could drive her into madness being alone in the jewel for so long. Was he willing to risk that for his own selfishness? Yes; he would but did he really want to?
This was going to have to take some thought. He silently removed himself from the bed and left the room in all his naked glory. He made his way to his study and took up his seat against the wall and stared out through the window into the fading light of the sun over his decayed gardens.
His hand rolled the tainted jewel around his palm as he considered his options. The circling of time was the one thing at the forefront of his mind. Somehow he felt as if this was something that had occurred before the only difference was that they continually shed themselves of their names when the cycle started all over again.
Near as he could tell was that while locked in the jewel she would forget him and come back to him as his enemy. Her soul would split and create the previous version of herself leaving him confused as to which one was the real one. The previous version of herself would be the one he remembered and would want while he tried to kill the newer version until she would grant herself to him. He would then realize that she was the real one but by then it was too late.
He had to break the cycle and knew there was only one way to do so. He needed to flaw the timeline somehow and had a pretty good idea as to how to go about the task. The question was was he willing to sacrifice such a thing? Would it be enough to make the change needed?
Which brought him to his ultimate question. A question he avoided at all costs one that could dramatically alter everything about him. 'How did he really feel about the girl?'
There was no denying that he desired her more than he ever desired her previous self. Yet was his desire strong enough to force him to sacrifice his one true desire to become complete?
It wasn't and he knew it.
Perhaps the continuing circle of time was the best course of action. What difference would it make if she started off as his enemy only to come to him as his lover towards the end of the circle? It would just start all over again as it had so many times before.
Yet somehow that last thought made him feel very tired. Tired of repeating the cycle over and over again. Would it ever end so that his soul may find peace from living a truly meaningless existence? Would hers? What was the point to the constant battle between them only to start anew? There wasn't one nor would there ever be one.
What would happen if one of them were to die before the cycle could repeat itself? How much of a change would that make? Would anyone even noticed if one of them were missing? Most likely not as her birth was the key to starting the cycle over again. A new child with a new name to come back and torment him, fight him, help him, love him, and leave him.
Therefore even if he killed her now she would just be reborn in the future anyway. It would be just a waste of time and effort to kill her now. His death in the here and now was the only way to end the cycle.
Yet to seek death for such a thing was something he would never do and a rather stupid thought. It was a never ending circle where only one death could cut the ring and set them both free.
He looked down at the jewel in his palm. It's dark purple swirling around madly waiting for him to make his wish so that it too could move on to the next circling of its life.
What if he wished to end the cycle? Where would that take him? Would he shatter and scatter with the many demons that occupied his empty shell? Would he still exist anywhere; between heaven and earth, heaven and hell, the abyss of nothingness? Did he really want to find out? How much longer could he walk this circle before he finally grew tired of it and ended it all?
He knew he would eventually make a decision to end it all but was that time now? Knowing that no matter what he did the same future would play out over and over again with no end in sight. He would eventually find himself sitting in this exact spot replaying the same thoughts over again as he was sure he had done so many times before.
"It will never end." He whispered to himself.
His own self preservation made sure that it would never end. He wasn't afraid of death by any means. No; what prevented him from ending it all by his own hand was the overwhelming desire to feel complete even if it was only for a moment.
With a deep sigh he curled his fingers around the tainted jewel and made his wish turning his life over to the fates so they could do with it as they will.
