Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.

The sale went through – how could it not, Kagome wondered, with Naraku and all his smarminess doing their best to make some rich fool buy some pretty wedding pots?

The moral fallacy in collaborating with the man who had nearly ended the world, once, was not lost on the former priestess. She didn't let it stop her from appreciating the profits – or the wedding guests-turned-Memoria-customers that were trickling in steadily. For the first time, she didn't regret the pretentious name she'd given her shop. Rich people liked pretentiousness, and the name allowed her to mark up all her prices to suit their egos, which led to them trying very hard to outspend each other.

All of the above meant money, sorely needed money for Kagome and the shrine. Really, she wondered why she even bothered calling it that anymore. It was more like a ball and chain.

A very small chain, a very large ball. And as is usual with balls, attached to a man.

Kagome decided to go home that night and curse out Inuyasha in his own language. A finger traveled across the table, stopping between her eyebrows and nudging her frown. She twitched, threw it off with a small spark of reiki, and did not bother to add her lunch companion's name to her cussing-out list. She simply called him a "motherballing womaniser" right there and shoveled some more lasagna into her mouth.

Naraku took his sizzling finger back and behaved himself for the rest of the meal.

Outwardly, he was all smooth smiles. He even forbore to point out that she had absolutely no evidence of his sex life being profligate. He also didn't point out that whether he wanted to be the talk of every girl's little black book or not was immaterial – as long as there was a chance that he could get a woman pregnant, he couldn't have sex.

He wondered what she would say if he were to tell her that he was still, at the ripe, pluck-able age of twenty-eight, an un-popped cherry. He rather suspected that she wouldn't believe him until he told her the reason why. And even then, she wouldn't believe him. In fact, she would very likely try and castrate him to ensure he never sired any children.

The former demon lord turned his gaze away from Kagome to stare around the restaurant. It was a nice place, not too expensive. Kagome had wanted to celebrate her newfound success, and he'd invited himself just to annoy her. In a perverse way, he wanted her to hate him – feel the full force of her hatred in his human heart. It might have the power to do what the hatred of hundreds couldn't do in his former life. What that power did, exactly, was something even he didn't know. He had never, after all, faced the complete consequences of his actions. He had certainly been destroyed and de-powered, but he had not been annihilated.

All his enemies were centuries dead, and he was still alive.

And that was how Naraku knew he was still evil, still hungry for power and revenge. He knew, because he was terribly, terribly glad that this was so. He was even more happy that his enemies had died nameless and faceless. They hadn't even managed to become mythology. A good man, a not-evil man, wouldn't have felt that way. A good man would have wanted to go and beg forgiveness at their graves.

Scratch it; a good man would have killed himself a long time ago if he had had this life.

Naraku, on the flip side, knew that he was not a good man at all because he was ridiculously, sneeringly happy that he was alive and never going to kill himself.

He looked away from the restaurant, aware that he wanted to tear every last person in the place to shrinking, writhing pieces. He wanted to have them stalked, find their worst secrets and biggest weaknesses and then throw them into a maelstrom of tragedy, of confusion and loss and guilt. He wanted to pick up his steak knife and cut off their waitress's fingers, simply because she needed them for her job. She was young – she probably needed the job for her college fees. Taking away her hands would take away her future. He wanted to do it very badly.

Later, he promised himself.

Of course, there wouldn't be a later. He just had to keep promising himself the same thing, procrastinating endlessly and distracting himself when later drew near.

He paid the bill silently, adding a generous tip for the waitress – to give her a mood lift on the day she lost her hands, and did not walk Kagome back to her shop. He would be visiting her later that night in any case, when the need for a distraction presented itself.

Later.

::sighs:: I lied. This isn't going to be a fluffy chick fic. It's going to be a fluffy dark fic.

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