ENVY
There is a hollow space between her ribs, and yet she still feels an ache where her heart should be.
It's an odd thing, Kagura doesn't like to think of herself as the emotional type, she has no time for such a ghostly thing as heartache, that hollow echo in her chest is nothing more than that. It doesn't exist, and therefore she sees no point in dwelling on the things that would send a human screaming to their knees.
Kagura swings her fan and brings on a bloodbath with glee, and yet…
When she looks at those around her, that ache burns through her breast stronger than Naraku's fist ever could.
As soulless as his eyes often are, Kagura has watched Kohaku thoroughly enough to see the glimpses, the brief lapses when he comes back to himself, the boy's heart on full display even with blood on his face.
She sees it in those brief moments when his sister comes barrelling through the skies, screaming his name with tears in her eyes, as she fights and scrambles and claws to get her brother back.
In the face of the monk when he throws the unconscious girl over his shoulder and stumbles up the stairs of Mt. Hakurei, knowing that if he opens the hole in his palm he will surely kill himself, but that if he does not the youkai salivating over his flesh most definitely will.
She knows it in the voice of the young miko, when, despite the infant sucking at her soul, she screams out her love for the hanyou―
Who comes crashing through the window, screaming her name even louder.
In the steps of a small human girl, following after a cold daiyoukai, and in the way he looks down at the top of her head, even when he thinks no one is looking…
She thinks it is loathing―that heat that fills her chest and the tips of her fingers―she feels when she catches those quick glances of those soft little looks. Because what else could it be? She loathes their weakness, the way they wear everything on their sleeves. It's disgraceful, embarrassing, repulsive, and she hates them for it, mocks them for it, because she would never let herself act so foolish.
The space between her ribs aches, and it isn't until Hakudoushi asks her why the slayer would throw herself on top of Kohaku, protecting him from the horde of rats, and that heat swirls through her belly, that she recognizes it for what it is.
It's jealousy.
Kagura has no heart, and for a youkai such a thing is nothing to feel shame for, but that ache tugs at her chest every time she sees them.
Kagura has no heart, and the one who holds it would sooner feed her to the dogs than allow her a crumb of affection.
But, she has no time to dwell on the absence of a warmth she's never known, not when her very life hangs on the whims of a monster. So she turns her eyes forward, and ignores the burn.
...