Written date: 03-04-2013
Sequel to Gossip of Your Downfall
He roared over her quavering body, his influence heightening as the walls trembled in groans and creaks. Within the dark peaks of the shadows, monsters hidden within the palace bellowed in response to their master's burst of power, and somewhere deeper within those walls, a lone woman with blue eyes laughed.
He collapsed above her, crushing her beneath him, but for the empty gashes and cold body nothing could touch her. It was all she was, all she had become—a body of nothing but bones and clay for his anger and hatred and despair and love. She was damned here with him and he had her but he didn't and so he was damned with her as well.
She did not breathe and she did not look. Instead she stared blankly and he peered angrily at her beautiful face; the soft skin of her body lying still and molding against his uneven shudders.
"Look at me." He growled. She didn't. She had nothing to fight for. He forced her face to him. Her eyes were void, nothing but a vacant gray. They were wonderful though, for even in that void there was the buried hatred. Hatred for him. For him.
Beneath his hands he felt her body. Flesh of clay and bones, without warmth and without beat—she really was nothing. But she was Kikyo. This empty body was Kikyo, and that alone was something and so the something blended with the nothing and this Kikyo was a nothing of herself.
He had her. He had her.
He looked into her eyes. He wanted her. He had her. He still wanted her. He had bidden as Onigumo wished and still Onigumo was not satisfied. He was missing something.
The miko of the wicked laugh and the stunning blue eyes whispered cruelty into his core.
He remembered now. She had laughed in their game. She knew this is what would become of him. She had gleefully told him the gossip of his downfall.
He hated her for being right, especially since he had come here to prove her wrong.
Nothing.
She looked at him and saw nothing. She looked at him and felt nothing. He had her, but he didn't have her. Onigumo wept. Naraku roared.
It was never enough.
He extracted himself from her and left her broken body on the floor.
"What must I do?!" He snarled at her, but she simply lay there and stared at him. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING.
Sating the blasted heart was impossible. He wanted Kikyo so he took Kikyo and still the heart wailed. He had her trapped in here within these inescapable walls. She could never leave him. Still this heart cried. He did as he pleased to her. There was nothing to hold him back. Onigumo sobbed. Naraku crumbled.
The exhaustion ate at him.
There was no peace.
There was no end.
His eyes stroked the wounds on her form, gashes that did not bleed and perforations that led nowhere. Still she stared.
He was empty and she was a shell and so she had made of him just as so. He wanted her but she knew only rejection because she could not accept and she was selfish just like he was selfish. She was perfect because she was like him. Heartless and needy.
For once, he spoke words that stirred her thoughts. "If you were alive, then?"
She blinked. It was enough for him. "If you had been alive, is that what it would have taken? Is it the form of death that bars you from me?"
She turned her head to the ceiling. An eternity or two had passed. Her black hair spilled beneath her gloriously. Onigumo clutched the heart close and looked at her pleadingly. Naraku let blood seep onto the floor and thought of the living miko, knowing without qualm that she was cackling with glee.
"You have me, Naraku." If he hadn't seen her lips move, he wouldn't have known that she had spoken.
"Do I have you, Kikyo?"
She looked at him now, full in the triumph that the blue-eyed miko basked in. A triumph that ripped him. "You will never have me, Onigumo."
She would never love him.
It would never end.
He would never have her.
There was nothing left of her now—simply shredded skin spread haphazardly over the floor. With satisfaction and horror he watched the rest of Kikyo's soul flit through the walls, undoubtedly returning to its original body.
Onigumo wept. Naraku hated. Kikyo was nothing now. She gave him nothing and left him with nothing.
'What now?!' Onigumo wailed a haunting ruin. 'Without Kikyo!'
Naraku felt the skin the dead priestess had not touched; remains of warmth still lingering from the living one. Her soft voice bid to him. There was no Kikyo for her to replace, no gratification taken because Kikyo was gone and where Kikyo could not love him Kagome could.
"Now I choose." Naraku mumbled to himself. He knew though. She would be just like her predecessor and be the end of him.
Kikyo rejected. Kagome accepted.
And perhaps that made her all the more dangerous.
Onigumo whimpered for Kikyo. The fool loved what he could not have. Naraku silenced him with callings to Kagome.
She would doom him, just as Kikyo had.
He walked down the corridors to his demise.