Title: Feeding the Monsters You're Afraid to Fight
Author: queen-of-sinking-ships
Rating: M [violence, implied sexual situations]
Pairing: Naraku/Kagome, Onigumo/Kikyou & Midoriko/Magatshui
Summary: Stories end, people change - eventually. Until then, wish all you want.
Length: One-shot [1,955 words]
Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha. Title and summary inspired by Niykee Heaton lyrics.
Feeding the Monsters You're Afraid to Fight
i.
First, there was Midoriko, and a man made of monsters.
It was from within her body that the Shikon Jewel was born - the result of unholy union between herself and Magatshui, killing-yet-not-killing them both.
Sometimes - all the time - Midoriko wishes she'd let herself die.
"Priestess," the monster-man purrs from the other side of their home, "What do you wish for?"
Stone-faced, Midoriko draws her bow. The motion has become repetitive, familiar, even though she knows it's no use to even try.
"I wish for your death."
The arrows flies in a perfect, straight line, glowing with purity as it pierces Magatshui's neck. He hisses, reeling in pain, while Midoriko watches numbly, waiting.
Eventually, Magatsuhi is able to pry the arrowhead from his mismatched flesh; a dark, oily substance spurts from the wound. When he grins across their eternal battlefield, she sees that his teeth are stained black.
"That's not a selfless wish, Priestess," he rasps, choking on blood and laughter.
Midoriko already knows that, but it's the only wish she has. A part of her - the part that still is a valiant, selfless priestess - withers at the reminder of her own failure.
So she allows one of Magatshui's demon limbs encircle her waist; allows it to choke the air she does not need from her wretched lungs -
Because, in the end, she was proving to be just as selfish as him.
...
ii.
Second, there was Kikyou, and a human monster.
It was from within a tiny, dank cave which Onigumo would come to desire Kikyou more than his own soul. Burned beyond recognition, Kikyou thought nothing of mending the pieces of his murderous, monstrous flesh, fooled by the human guise he was born in.
One night, she comes with bandages and food and love in her heart, and Onigumo notices.
"You are happy," he wheezes through broken teeth, narrowing his (single, only, lonely) eye. The veins surrounding it's pale iris strain with effort, popping out like a mess of bloodied spiderwebs.
Kikyou smiles softly, using the opportunity to coax some broth down his throat. "What makes you say that, Onigumo?"
Her tone strikes him as arrogant, mocking - for a moment, he thinks he hates her, and wants nothing more than to fuck that smug, haughty expression right off her beautiful face.
Still, there was no mistaking the faraway look in the priestess' dark gaze. It was the same look women gave him before they realized who he was and what he did.
"Is there...some...some...?"
He cannot say it; cannot bring himself to ask a question to which he already knows the answer. In the shadowy corners of his bandit mind, Onigumo decides that this is Hell - to be rendered helpless, within reach of something you wanted, forever knowing that it was going to be taken away.
Kikyou's features abruptly smooth, changing back into the role of a calm, collected, virgin miko.
"Rest, Onigumo." she orders him cooly, standing. Her body looms over his; again, Onigumo cannot help but feel like this is some sort of mockery.
"Wh..wh..."
But she's already gone, gone, out of his broken, burned reach. Left sputtering on the cave floor - hating her and loving her and hating hating hating - Onigumo is unsure if he'd been trying to say who or why or wish.
...
iii.
Last, there was Kagome, and a man made of monsters who housed a human heart.
It was from within the Sacred, wicked Jewel that she made her selfless wish - the wish which erased the jewel itself from existence; the wish that catapulted her back to her own time; the wish that ended the misery of a pathetic, evil spider who was in love with a woman he could never have.
After a week of crying and praying and hopeless hoping, Kagome thinks that the well will never open again. The thought of InuYasha becomes too much for her to bear, so she stops hoping (What good did that ever do, anyway?) and starts forgetting.
With a bruised heart, she forgets the way he smelled, forgets the sound of his voice - meticulously ripping out pieces of her memory and stepping on each one like it will ease the bitter pain in her chest that never seems to dull.
It's a long, painful process, and most of the time Kagome hates herself for being selfish. But she is no longer in feudal Japan - no longer in the company of demon slayers or lecherous monks or fox children or hanyous who fell in love with priestesses. There was no point in pretending otherwise.
So, she forgets.
.
.
.
And then, somewhere in the middle of forgetting, Kagome meets him again in a bookstore.
"Naraku!" she splutters, wide-eyed and staring. Aside from a form-fitting sweater and beige slacks, he looks just like he did back then, in the time before forgetting - all long black hair and cold pale mouth and wretched red eyes that never failed to fray every nerve in her body.
In a moment of irony, she realizes that in her efforts to forget all of InuYasha, she has done nothing to remove the memory of her nemesis. Kagome thinks that she could paint a picture of him and not miss any details; unbeknownst to her, Naraku's eyes, hair, scent, voice, had crept into the spaces of her brain where she'd torn out the man she loved.
Now, as he stood before her, alive and whole and not InuYasha, Kagome wants nothing more than to erase him all over again.
"You're not InuYasha." She states the obvious in a dull, resigned voice, not bothering to hide her disappointment.
Naraku, too, seems startled upon catching her between the bookshelves, but the unease leaves his gaze the moment those words fall from her trembling lips.
"I'm well aware," he replies stiffly, expression bitter. Kagome realizes the irony in this, too - he of all people must know what it's like to be not InuYasha, just as she knows what it's like to be not Kikyou. Immediately, she regrets making the comparison; feels guilty for doing the very thing everyone had done to her, feels guilty for comparing Naraku to an ideal that he will never achieve.
Naraku must understand, because he sort of smiles grimly and drawls, "There's no pain quite like being almost, is there?"
No, there wasn't. But Kagome doesn't say that.
Instead, she asks:
"How are you alive?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
Silence.
The smirk slips from Naraku's mouth, and suddenly he looks tired - so tired that Kagome can hardly believe this was the man who'd ruined countless lives, including his own.
"It's the Shikon. We're being thrown together again."
"Again? But the Jewel - "
"Is gone. We will be the last ones." His ruby irises are heavy, intense; Kagome swears she can feel them bore into her skin, digging deeper, reaching for her bones and heart and soul. "But it is what the Shikon does. It did so with Midoriko and Magatsuhi, it did so with Kikyou and Onigumo. We are part of it's cycle. We always have been."
"What are you saying?" Her hands are shaking, fingers dancing above the green schoolgirl skirt she now hates wearing.
There is no joy on Naraku's face. "You and I - we - are doomed to one another. We cannot escape ourselves."
Something shatters within her, because Kagome knows he's right, but wishes he was not; wishes she had never seen him, wishes she could see InuYasha, wishes she'd never been born, wishes wishes wishes like doing so might mend the fractured, scattered pieces of her life into something less than a nightmare.
And then she thinks, somewhat desperately, that this might be enough, he might be enough - surely, to have a piece of the world she'd left behind was better than having nothing at all. Surely, to kiss the Devil and know that God existed somewhere out there was better than to learn that neither Heaven nor Hell existed in the first place.
So Kagome grits her teeth and grinds the last image of a silver-haired boy into the dust of dead memories before tossing her threadbare yellow backpack on the floor, closing the gap between herself and the man she despised with trembling, lonely lips.
(Naraku tastes like mint and death and almost InuYasha.)
He responds eagerly, tongue shoving roughly past her teeth, sucking out the last bits of hope from inside her mouth, a starving man.
Kagome whimpers with relief, clinging to his impossibly tall frame, fearing him and herself and wishes and letting go, because she knows the dangers of the heart and time better than anyone else, and refuses to make the same mistake twice.
.
.
.
There are evenings where Kagome kisses her husband's cheek before she crawls out of the circle of his arms and into the clutches of night. She does so because she loves him, and because InuYasha seems to relax some when her lips touch his skin, as if he can feel the reassurance she is trying to give.
When the well opened again, InuYasha had been waiting there to pull her back into the Feudal Era, back into his arms - so the first few nights she'd tried to leave, he would wake up in a panic, choking something about losing her all over again.
It had taken him a while to accept that there were times she just had to go.
Sometimes Kagome wonders if he knows (really, truly, knows) but doesn't say anything to stop it. The thought makes her sick with guilt, twists her organs into mismatched shapes - the ailments of the faithless.
Tonight is no different. Kagome feels the telltale tug of self-imposed punishment somewhere within her stomach as she creeps past the last of the village huts and into the forest. Thorns and pebbles cut the soles of her bare feet; ignoring the pain, she presses deeper into the darkness, imagining the quiet screams of a thousand mismatched youkai welded together by a selfish wish and a heart all the more so.
Naraku is waiting for her beneath a peach tree.
"Priestess," he greets her, standing. Kagome can't remember the last time he's used her name.
So she replies, "Monster."
And that is where their conversation ends.
Admist shadows and sin, Kagome re-discovers the end of herself and the beginning of something (someone) else. She is half a priestess and half a wife and all a traitor, just as he is half a man and half a monster and all a fool, but Kagome appreciates their symmetry:
When she arches her back, his shoulders dip down, and they meet.
When he is silent, she moans, and they create a steady rhythm.
When she cries, he cries, too.
They are only fingers in black hair and bloody, bitten lips; all resentful release and lovely, loveless lies when it's done and over with. Yet neither of them are willing to give up their almosts or their half-wishes - even though she has to find a stream and scrub herself raw to erase him from her body, even though he must live as a specter along the fringes of domesticity and death. For this is the first time in all their times that they've both been granted these things, and sometimes it's hard to let go of something your soul needs.
Kagome muses over his selfishness and her own, wondering which heart would be harder to kill.
So this will be their fate, until the day their greedy, grasping hearts rot and end themselves -
Both of them wonder which one will come first.
...
a/n: So, reason #4348922 why I ship Naraku/Kagome: they fit within the 'theme' of the Shikon Jewel. The jewel takes a priestess, an evil man in love with her, and pits them against one another to keep itself alive - remember, also, that the two have to contrast one another, in order to sort of maintain the balance of energy in the Jewel (It almost seems like an evil battery...). Regardless, Naraku is in love with Kikyou because he's been pulled into the Jewel's cycle, so he literally has no choice but to love her. He was even willing to take the Jewel's twisted version of his wish - to be trapped inside it with Kikyou's reincarnation.
I have this theory that the three 'couples' affected by the Shikon are all reincarnations of one another - essentially, that the Shikon takes the same souls into it's cycle of destruction. So I think Kagome & Naraku are simply the next generation of that cycle. Kagome is destined to hate him, and Naraku is destined to love at least some part of her. Just my opinion!
Writing this took way longer than it needed to. The first part was easy, but it was harder trying to create a sense of cyclicality with characters that didn't always fit the mold. I'm used to writing vignettes, and this sort of deviated from the style once in a while, so it got confusing.
Reviews, comments, sharing, etc. are greatly appreciated.