Oh Hai Guys!
Here's another chapter! It's short AGAIN, but it stopped in a good place. I figured you'd rather have an update now anyway? :P
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I actually wrote most of this chapter while walking on the treadmill today! Two birds with one stone. LOL
Just wanted to give a huge thank you to the fans that reviewed and messaged me with their love and support over the last couple of days. You know who you are and you're seriously everything to me. :) I am VERY happy to be here, writing Memoirs again! Especially with this breakthrough...
Please enjoy
Chapter 39: Tragically Ironic
The ancient, deteriorating castle disgusted her. The rotten smell of human flesh, the perpetual ash that receded into the lines of her mouth and beneath her nostrils... it was unbecoming for a demon of her caliber. If she belonged to Sesshoumaru, she would never have to stay in such filth, nor in the company of it.
Kagura carefully administered the crimson pigments along her lips, using only a faint reflection of a remnant puddle of blood. If Kanna was here, it would be much easier. This godforsaken place doesn't even have a mirror!
"You do know there are easier ways to do the things you are doing, hm, Naraku?" she haughtily suggested while puckering at the blood.
"Hmph," Naraku scoffed, taking her in from the base of the window with dark, detestable eyes. "You know better, Kagura. It is not about the ease."
"...Yeah, I know." She sighed a breath wet with animosity. She threw a hand on her hip and reclaimed her fan from her bosom. "But do you really think that this Sesshoumaru is worth all of the trouble? InuTaishou is out of the way now, so the village—"
"This game is far more interesting… for the time being," he interjected. Smiling, Naraku let his fingers glide over the tip of his nose and the spanse of his mouth. "Nothing is truly worth my trouble. Nothing but power."
Kagura slowly rocked her hip, a masked gesture of extreme distaste. She knew how he worked, but she was starting to question his motives. By now, the object in question could be obtained… and yet, he was stalling.
"Where's the fun in torture, if not done slowly?" Naraku suggested while exhaling a ragged breath, as if the thought alone aroused the violence within him.
"...You're psychotic. But you already knew that." Kagura flipped the pearl drops of a jade earring. Of course, he would respond with something so vaguely him.
Naraku chuckled, satisfied with the compliment as he shifted his attention to the door. "Ah, Kanna has returned."
She entered through the glassy, rippling blue of the inner barrier... but without that wretched girl in pursuit.
"So, she refused you?" Kagura deduced, huffing, "That girl is smarter than I thought."
"Yes," blithely, Kanna replied.
"How dull. I was counting on a good laugh from the look on her face when she saw him." Kagura side-glanced a now morose and seething Naraku. Truthfully, she thought, I'd have liked to see the girl go.
Since vowing her eternal servitude to Naraku, just after he had saved her from the clutches of demon traffickers nearly a decade ago, her savior had become greedy and embittered. Envious, even. It mattered not to her that he was a half-demon, then. He had been half a demon that had done right by her; a thousand-fold right.
But then... after he and Sesshoumaru had obtained the Shikon no Tama, something had changed within him. Something she likened to his filthy human side.
She had approached him on the day he retrieved it and asked a simple question.
"What made you into what you are?"
"What do you mean?" he eyed her skeptically as he sipped—what seemed like perpetually—on absinthe. That was during the time he was tirelessly attempting to build his tolerance to it, to keep up with his new friend, Sesshoumaru.
Kagura gathered all of her strength in that moment. "I can smell it on you. The putrid human flesh turned demon… alive at that. You were not born this way. You were human first."
He dropped the carafe, and in the heat of a second, she flew across the room. Thousands of pins and needles drilled into and burned her skin as her bones cracked against remnants of the destroyed slayer village.
"Does what I just did to you… feel like lukewarm, half-demon power?"
Her lips ached even just uttering a painful mewl, one that hinged her to consciousness.
Naraku pulled out the Shikon no Tama, in its entirety. "That Sesshoumaru knew not of what he was giving up when he agreed to give me the spoils of this village. This jewel has the power to make me the greatest demon alive and yet… you sit here and belittle me with such blatant lies?"
She bared her fangs as tears pooled into the crevices of her snarl. "You dare call it a lie when you still can't drink even a teacup of absinthe without becoming belligerent?"
He wobbled then, grimacing at her.
"You may be able to fool the ones who don't spare you a second glance, Naraku, but you will never fool the one you love."
He laughed then. Heartily, maniacally, and eventually he had quieted it to a wide smirk. "Foolish Kagura. I have never loved you."
Her heart fell to the floor as he continued. "Human and demon males alike have needs that someone like you fulfill quite well, given the richness of your history."
Her senses eluded her, and all she could recall were the times she pleasured him, the times he called upon her, the things that never meant to him what they meant to her.
She dropped to her knees.
"No, that word is reserved for only one other, and that damned soul of Onigumo has ensured that it never be lost, try as I might."
"Then why am I here?!" She yelled, sobbing. "Why have you not gone to her?!"
It was then that a look of compassion swept across Naraku's features. A look most ominous, she noticed later.
"Because I need you," he whispered. Walking over, kneeling down, face to face with his lover, Naraku wiped the tears from her stained jaw. "Once I obliterate the throne of the West and rip these lands from the one who controls that pitiful town, then I can take her."
"You...you love a human woman?" Kagura couldn't believe what she was hearing. She stood on uneasy legs and pushed away from him. "I'm leaving."
It was only two or three steps of freedom, and then the worst pain of her life soared across her body, originating and pulsating from the depths of her heart. Falling to the ground she writhed and clutched, ripping into her chest until blood coated her haori. All the while, Naraku only slightly tilted his head.
"Unfortunately, my dearest Kagura, you are far too invaluable to let go free. That is, until my deeds are done."
"You damned coward!" she wailed, riddled with suffering, "Release me!"
And he did, from the pain at least. It subsided into mere tendrils beneath her skin, akin to miasma dispersing across an ocean of fresh air. She gasped the breaths of a thousand men—death so near it warped her sight.
"The faster I get the western dog demons and their influence out of that village, the faster you get your freedom," Naraku smiled. "Now, are you going to help me do it?"
A thousand thoughts, emotions, and memories flooded every part of Kagura's body—a cry from her soul that was now lost forever. Suddenly, nothing she could think of amounted to any of significance. For the first time in her life, she felt truly lifeless.
"All right. I'll do as you say," Kagura's voice melded with the air. "But please. Just answer my question."
"Remind me, as I've already forgotten it," Naraku coldly replied.
"What made you into what you are?"
A sneer overtook his features, discrediting every affirmation he had given her over the years. "It's tragically ironic, actually."
"Tell me," she near screamed. Sunlight streamed in through the splits in the old hut's wood, butterflies floated about in the distance. It would be the largest contrast she'd ever see. A warm and sunny day, idling behind this demon and the havoc he had just wrought on this entire village, and herself.
"...Love," he replied, softly stroking her cheek, yet smirking as if he were about to crush her skull into splinters. "An insatiable, lusting, and festering love by a horrid, idiotic human man… for that damned Geisha that every living soul sought back then... Kikyo."
"Show me," Naraku demanded viciously of Kanna, pulling Kagura from her thoughts. Their lifeless daughter, formed into a mindless weapon by both their blood, marched over to him.
The difference between then and now, Kagura thought, is that Naraku seems to keep finding obstacles that prevent him from going after Kikyo. But why?
"Well, I suppose I can't be too angry by this outcome," Naraku's voice lightened to a cackle as he gazed into the mirror.
"What is it?" Kagura asked, clicking her fan against her shoulder.
"It seems I underestimated the level of emotion developing between them," he replied. "Have a look."
Kagura maneuvered around the mirror and peered into its reflective glass. Her mouth fell open at the sight.
"But Sesshoumaru would never be caught dead—"
"And yet, here he is," Naraku laughed, walking to the center of the room, jittering with excitement. "This is going to be much more amusing than I thought."
Kagura returned her gaze again to the mirror.
And there… as plain as the moment before, and as sure as the moonlight shining on their sleepless faces... was the regal, human-loathing Sesshoumaru tenderly embracing that human wretch…
...with his lips resting softly on hers.
So I bet you can't guess what the next chapter will be...
Well.
Definitely everything we missed from them being weirdly in bed together, to them KISSING!
I will write this next one soon, promise!
Much love,
Xeraaaaa
