. . Well shit, yo. I realized I should update this thing, while I'm sitting uselessly around, and whoa, I read the last chapter, and. . . umm . . I have no Idea where I thought I was going with that. Doh! So here's a guess. . .

Kikyo stood in the dark forest, holding Kagura's borrowed soul in her hands. She could feel the pulsing of the soul, the vitality that came from belonging to a living being. The soul wanted to reunite with its body. But which body? Kikyo frowned in concentration; if released, would this bundle of energy snap back into Kagura, or would it fracture into all of its original components, would it fly into Naraku? And could it be made to carry her holy energy with it?

Idly, Kikyo caressed the errant soul. It had a warmth about it, an attraction, that the prickly Kagura tried so hard to hide beneath her brittle, cynical exterior. Maybe if she held it long enough, it could warm even Kikyo's cold hands, her cold and unbeating clay heart. Oh, she could absorb it, for sure, but that would not serve her purpose at all. This soul was not meant for her sustenance, but for her retribution.

Kikyo lifted the bundle of energy to her forehead, murmured a prayer, tried to align her tainted soul with that she held in her hands, and concentrated on establishing the rapport. It would have been impossible had she not had the taint on her own soul. It would have been impossible had Kagura not possessed a kind of bracing spiritual purity of her own – the purity of soul that kept her fighting against Naraku in whatever small ways she could despite the total control he had over her life, her death, and her freedom. The task was also made easier by the emotional kinship the two women –the one undead, the other demon—possessed. Oh, it was not a kinship either would have gladly recognized, or admitted, but it was there: the embittered women, enslaved by forces beyond their control, trapped in a destiny they would not have chosen for themselves, forced to compromise, and hating themselves for those compromises, yet still possessed of a fierce dignity and a serenity of purpose that nothing could sway.

Kikyo braced herself as she made contact. Her cool eyelids slid closed over dry lifeless eyes as the pulse ran through her, the pulse of pain that reverberated through Kagura's soul. She gasped in shock as the feeling spread—this was far stronger than she had anticipated, stronger and more vivid. In fact, vivid enough that Kikyo felt her entire being aligning with Kagura, feeling with her flesh of clay, what Kagura's muscle and blood and skin felt, seeing behind closed eyes what Kagura's wide open orbs beheld. And the sudden torrent of emotions that ran through her was almost too much to take. Emotions that she in her muted undead form, was unable to feel for herself anymore. All the things that Kagura would have felt, had her soul been in her body—fear, rage, hate, even hope, now transmitted to Kikyo instead.

If she could have torn herself away from the experience, Kikyo might have paused to reflect that this was not quite what she'd had in mind. But it was too late for second thoughts. The similarities that the two women shared strengthened the contact between their souls, amplifying upon itself in a horrific feedback loop, until Kikyo thought she would explode with the intensity of it all. Instead, something else happened.

"This is what you get for playing with things you do not fully understand," Kikyo managed to think almost regretfully, "What you get for acting hastily like your misbegotten reincarnation." It was the last thing she managed to think of her own volition before she felt her own soul open up and dissolve, merging with Kagura's, the synergy between the two throwing up energy like sparks in the air. Even Kagura felt it, miles away in Naraku's dungeon. Felt it, just as he felt the sparks leaping off her skin at that moment.

That wasn't all though. What Kikyo had inadvertently managed to trigger, was something like the event that had created Naraku from Onigumo and the demon swarm. For all intensive purposes, she and Kagura were now one being. Albeit in two very different bodies. It must have been an underlying function remaining in Kagura when she'd been born from Naraku, the capacity to merge and separate out souls and bodies like her parent.

With the sparks came a more substantial change. Kagura and Kikyo didn't quite merge completely. No, they managed to retain some individuality, but it was undeniable, they were psychically linked-- each able to see through the other's eyes, feel what the other felt, (which, in Kikyo's body of clay, wasn't much, but even so). . . Moreover, they now each possessed some of the other's memories and skills—their hopes and desires already overlapped enough that they hardly even noticed the change in that. And, they could communicate with the other. Maybe not in words, but in impressions and sensations, directives and motivations. Very abstract. But enough.

Kikyo reeled with the shock. For her, perhaps, it was worse (what there was left of her own self to be called her Her, that is), to feel all the things which she had been denied for so long—it was like being alive again. She felt alive!

Kagura would have reeled in shock, except, for the small little fact that she was already chained to the wall, in the dungeon, as usual, with Naraku preparing to hurt her, again, as usual. It's rather hard to reel when you're splayed across the wall. She did gasp, though, when the soul she now shared with Kikyo reunited with her in a rather dramatic way. She'd been rather enjoying the emotionless serenity of soullessness, the incapacity of feeling. Now, suddenly, Wham! It was back, and not just back, but with the added burden of Kikyo's cool presence impinging on everything. Her enemy, her mother, her soul.

The sparks emanating from Kagura's skin at this merger were a bit of a problem. Naraku could not fail to notice them. He did not fail to notice them.

Cruel hands brushed along Kagura's skin, feeling the bright energy nipping at his flesh, like little electric shocks. Stimulating, almost arousing, the way they pricked. That was how he liked his Kagura. Feisty and Prickly.

The way she'd looked at him when she'd returned with Kanna's corpse, cool and emotionless. No, he hadn't liked that at all. Then she'd reminded him of Kikyo, that undead bitch. He didn't want anyone reminding him of Kikyo, save the miko herself. She was special, she was the only . . . She was what all of this was about. Subjugating her, killing her brutally and corrupting her dead flesh, that would be the ultimate victory to be savored in its uniqueness. Nothing else should come close. He wanted no preview. Nothing but the real thing. So Kagura's little display of reserve hadn't pleased him at all. He'd chained her up, but hadn't been able to bring himself to begin his little torture session, which he usually did so enjoy, because she just felt so wrong.

He'd almost begun to wonder if the little minx was doing it deliberately to piss him off, when the sparks began to shoot from her skin, and her eyes to blaze up, like her aura was blazing now.

This was more like it.

Naraku grinned, that menacing, predator's expression exuding naught but an icy malice, directed at his errant offspring.

"Now, tell me, daughter. . . " he drawled, as his sharp nails traced bloody patterns in Kagura's skin, "Tell me everything that happened this evening."

Kagura took a deep breath, hardly even feeling the cruel attentions of her parent, so absorbed was she in the novel sensations of seeing through two sets of eyes, of feeling through two sets of skins, and what was most confusing, of feeling another's thoughts impinging upon her own. She could feel Kikyo's icy serenity washing through her, calming her against even the worst Naraku could do. If she closed her eyes against Naraku, she could pretend she was only in Kikyo's body, feeling the cool press of the earth against her, numb to all pain. In contrast, Kikyo was almost reveling in the ability to feel again, albeit the uncomfortable sensations that Naraku was inflicting upon the defenseless wind demon.

"Ah Naraku." It was Kagura's voice that spoke, but not her mind behind it. Kikyo had borrowed the body, while Kagura's consciousness sought momentary respite in her vessel of clay.

Naraku started. The intonation was Nothing like Kagura's normal tone of repressed hatred. No, there was something far too chilly, too untouchable and expressionless in this voice. Too much like Kikyo. And the eyes, when they opened to stare into his pale face; so calm, so utterly collected. This was not Kagura, and he knew it. He didn't know enough to be afraid, however.

"Not a proper father, are you Naraku?" Kagura's voice asked distantly, as if speaking from far away, "To treat your daughter so. Is this the power you seek? Power over your children, to abuse them as you will? So petty. I would have expected better from Onigumo at least. He may have been a thief and a murderer, but at least he had ambition. Why seek the Shikon no Tama, when your imagination is so limited? You would not know how to use it properly anyway."

"Who are you?" Naraku's eyes narrowed in suspicion, "And what have you done with My daughter?"

Kikyo just gazed at him steadily through Kagura's eyes, expressionless as ever. It was easy to keep the face still when she was busy trying to figure out how to produce holy energy from a demon body. She wasn't sure it was possible, and somehow she was loathe to attempt anything that might begin to purify Kagura from the inside out without doing Naraku any harm.

"Miko." Naraku fairly hissed the word, as he recognized the expression, made the connection between the arrow Kagura had borne and the voice speaking to him now. "Your illusion is impressive." He thought Kikyo had slain Kagura and was pretending to be her, "But it will do you no good now." After all, she was chained to his dungeon, and therefore subject to his every whim. It was almost anticlimactic, how easily she had fallen. Perhaps she had not expected Naraku to treat his offspring like this. But he was no fool, if this was the undead miko, he would take extra precautions. And then he would enjoy this moment as he had always desired. Reveling in her complete degradation, until she begged him to hurt her more. "But you are foolish. And now you are mine . . ."

He moved in for the kill. Sinister and dark, he allowed his tentacles to spread, enough miasma polluting the air to incapacitate all but the strongest enemy, or any child of his flesh. Naraku glided forward with a predator's deadly grace, his tentacles adding to the chains that bound Kagura to the wall, caressing her flesh with cruel stings, slithering into her most intimate places, even as his sharp nails gouged into her skin.

But for all his hungry immediacy, he was too slow. Too slow to capture his elusive prey. Kagura, watching from the safe distance of Kikyo's mind, reacted first. It was not in her to let another suffer this in her place, even if that other was one whom she had long hated. Kikyo was a part of her now, whether she wanted it or nay, just as she was a part of Kikyo. And there was no way in any hell there might be, that Kagura was going to allow this—allow a miko, tainted as she might be, to suffer further degradation at the hands and body of a creature as depraved as Naraku.

Naraku assumed that the hoarse "No!" that sprang from her throat was a desperate cry for help, when, in reality, it was simply Kagura forcing her own consciousness back into her battered body, taking on the pain that was meant for another.

"Oh yessssss……………" was all the reply he offered.

Inside her head, Kagura forced the miko's awareness to the back, where she could not feel the awful sensations of her flesh, until it was only Kagura, alone, assuming the burden of her pain, while Kikyo, deprived temporarily of access to Kagura's senses, retreated to plan their course of action. . .

Eventually, Naraku would realize that it truly was Kagura upon whom he had unleashed his fierce appetites. And then his punishment of her would double. But she would gladly bear that burden, for now she had an ally, the most unlikely ally she could ever have imagined herself to possess. At the end of the night, when she hung in her chains, battered, bruised, and bleeding, it was Kikyo's cool voice that whispered in her mind, Kikyo's cool caresses in her soul that numbed the pain, almost like a mother would, and Kikyo whose soul embraced hers tightly, the sum greater than their parts. And almost, she felt hope. For while she might not understand how their plan had gone awry, for once she was not alone. She might never be alone again . .

TBC

. . . hmm. . . this chapter was hard to write, didn't come out all that well, and was probably not where I thought I was going last time I left off on this fic, but at least I got the kik/kagu leg of the triangle all settled. Not exactly romantic or even sexual, but who said it had to be? . . until next time, whenever that might be. . . cm. . .