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Sordid Gain
To know true agony was to feel the soul peeled away from flesh and rendered asunder into the endless depths of nothing. Yearning — cold, childish, and empty — for one who would never grace his sight again. The armor of nested demons surrounding the foolish beating heart of a man, cracked and dissipating into threads of light as he sank further into the abyss.
Her name was suffrage on his lips, sealing them painfully, but he clawed at the binds in the hopes to speak it once more.
Consciousness faded as he was swept beneath the roaring waves.
Perhaps it was the River Sanzu where he would drown amidst the serpents lying in wait to drag him into hell. Bitterness tinged with a sweet thought, with all that she’d done, would he see her there in the flames and eternal damnation.
It was Naraku who wanted to drag her into hell with him.
Naraku - a puppet driven by human emotions, when cut from his strings and stripped of his ill-gotten powers, was nothing more than a selfish, bitter, horrible man whose greatest downfall was loving a woman —
enough to ruin her to keep her heart as his own.
The world was cool and dark, encasing him in a shroud of nothingness, ebbing and flowing his body as if carried by the tide. He had long since stopped thinking of where or when he was. Refused to try and break the seal tethering his lips and sewing his eyes shut. There was nothing more to do. He had lost. No, had he ever truly been winning? All of his accomplishments, all of his victories, all of the beings he created from his flesh — he thought it was to achieve his own ends but he was wrong.
In the end, he was a puppet of someone else’s design spurred by the desire of one who would not love him. Every time he tried to draw the face of his enemies to mind, he could only pick out one.
Silver hair flowing on the wind, golden eyes alight with contempt, donning red as vibrant as the day he’d taken his form. The flash of a blade slicing through the air obscuring his triumphant and venomous expression from view — it was him who captured her heart — and the malice he’d felt for him for so long was hollow.
Had he ever truly looked at him? Aside from the nuisance reminding him of all he could not have. Surely, there was a reason to detest him aside from his mutual love with her. And yet, try as he might, he could find none. No other reason to detest the man known as Inuyasha. And how cruel was it. They’d been almost the same — selfish, desiring, empty — yet he amassed companions, love, power.
And for all of the tricks and steps he had ahead of Inuyasha, he was rewarded with nothing.
Not even her.
“How long are you going to lay there?”
His thoughts were interrupted by the bemused dry tone. A rush of cold filling his lungs, and it must have been his imagination, but he swore his heart throbbed. Chest constricted and eyes struggling beneath their closed lids, he fought against the tug to his mind.
What do you want?
Hadn’t she tortured him enough in life?
The voice seemed closer, hovering over him now, and he shuddered at the warm breath curled around his nose as if she were leaning over him. “And here I believed you would be happy to see me,” she said loftily, hauntingly beautiful and hissing as she added. “Naraku.”
He wanted to frown. The seam of his lips, cracked and dusted from disuse, parted as he spoke in raspy voice.
“Don’t call me by that name.”
His breath was caught in his chest as he felt a touch to his cheek. Warmth slipping along his cheek to the divot beneath his eye and over his nose. Had his body not fully dissolved into the abyss? Was this not a cruel trick of his mind? He dared not lean into her touch. She hardly deserved that and neither did he.
Like the quiet pattering of rain, she hummed rhythmically, her touch furthering as a palm rest against his cheek. Her voice, lowered to a whisper, lips just shy of his own.
“Isn’t it one you coveted after you threw yours away?” She gave a withering sigh and his chest cinched in response. Torturous tremors prickling at his skin. “Naraku, the hanyō born from hell’s depths, a spider who brings misfortune upon all those pitiful enough to glimpse his threads, unaware of the web they’re entangled in until they’ve breathed his poisonous presence.”
Before, he may have laughed at those words but he was tired and she would leave him yet again. To wallow in despair. He would not give her the satisfaction.
“Are you here to shame me, Kikyō?” He bit out in a harsh raspy snap, vibrations grating against his raw throat, barely containing the crack as he shakily muttered. “At the end.”
Silence hung in place of a response and he thought, with spiteful relief, that she left him to his oblivion. Then, as if attempting to claw into his soul, her hands cradled his jaw. Nails catching in the hollows of his throat, barely more than a pinch but enough of a reminder. She was there. Whether to torture him as a phantom or to achieve her revenge before nirvana, he knew not.
“You have been sleeping for some time and it is time to wake,” she urged, her hands slipping across his face to his eyes and his heart thundered.
“No.” He protested weakly but with an urgent panic overwhelming his senses. “Let me rest here.”
“While I tend to your battered soul?” She said, almost sweetly, if not for the biting sharpness of her touch. “I think not.”
His heart. What beat for her now pulsed in panic. He didn’t want to relinquish this. Let him rest in the nothingness for eternity, he thought in alarm, because if he emerged and laid eyes on her again —
He would be doomed.
Ignoring his pleas, her fingertips brushed the underside of his eyelashes, barely a whisper against his cheeks.
“Wake.”
Lurching upright, his chest seized as he strained for breath, gasping and coughing. Fire seared the inside of his throat with each rib-cracking wretch. Toppling over in a heap, he curled his fingers in a lush wet mass pillowing his cheek and uprooted as his body convulsed. The world came alive around him. Thick scents mingling together, filling his aching skull as he tried to find his footing. Slipping with each dig of his feet in a damp quick-sinking slide. Circles danced along the back of his eyelids though he dared not open them. His heart hammering, threatening to break free from his ribs.
“Where is this?” He hissed raggedly, whipping his head from one side to the other, searching the darkness for a flutter of red and white, glossy black hair tinged a faint violet — anything. “Kikyō!”
A soft vicious touch took hold of his swiveled head and forced him to stay still. “Stop shouting,” she scolded in a low tone, her breath brushing just shy of his skin. “Open your eyes.”
Whether it was with his consent or without, he did not know, but his eyes opened nonetheless. And all at once, he could breathe again. The searing flames scalding his throat simmered deep in his chest then extinguished one ember at a time as his sight focused. Flecks of light drifted about her head in a halo, fluttering about and melting into the shadows. He glanced up at the branches stretching almost endlessly to the sky, barely blocking the endless disinterested heavens. Moonlight barely able to pass through the barren branches, swirls of silver misting around them, the lush wetness being that of the grass overgrown to where he could no longer see sodden earth and dusted roads.
When he’d finally gathered his breath, her hands slipped from him and he sorely missed the touch as much as he detested it.
Swallowing thickly as he stared up at her. She was ethereal, gazing down her nose at him from where he was knelt. “Is this hell?” he rasped, sucking in a deep breath through his nostrils in a greedy attempt to fill them with as much air as possible.
Her eyes widened by a fraction then fell, heavy-lidded, a coy smile curling her lips as she laid a hand over her heart. “I thought you would feel heavenly as long as I am nearby,” she said, saccharine poison dripping from her words. “Don’t tell me your feelings have changed so easily.”
“Enough of your games,” he spat, stumbling to his feet as shaky as a newborn foal.
She sneered and her gaze, cutting and cold, pierced him in the deepest reaches of his heart twisting it in a vice grip. “You always enjoyed playing them before. Now that you’re without the upper hand, they vex you, don’t they?” She pressed the blunt nail of her index finger to his chest, twisting the proverbial dagger in his skin. “Look around you. Do you not recognize it when your miasma isn’t draining it of life?”
He breathed in deeply, holding back the words that threatened to volley insults at her face. Finally tearing his gaze from her own to survey their surroundings — thick springy grass dappled with flowers, oak trees bared of leaves aside those bursting with them. Their knotholes occupied by creatures, warbling idly in their slumber, seemingly unaware of them. Bushes teeming with life, a semi-somnolent darkness blanketing them, and yet none grew the wiser to them.
“We are in the realm of the living,” Kikyō said. Her tone was colorless, practiced, and yet smug. “Past the partition of life.”
Cold-nipped and aware, he turned his eyes back to her. “The afterlife.”
“Purgatory, or so some call it.” It was a statement, a damning one, leaving him bereft with questions mores than answers.
Kikyō stepped past. Her footsteps soundless against the sifting grass, a stiff breeze carrying the scent of rain and earth but not death. He shuddered and turned to face her, unwilling to let her out of his sight for long. Standing was hard enough but he tried to walk after her, shaky and uneven whereas she was graceful in her strides.
“Why?” He whispered, loud in the stillness.
Her image shimmering in the moon’s wake, eyes unreadable as she tipped her head up then glanced over her shoulder. “You have been judged,” she said simply. An unladylike snort, soft and derisive stinging ire and warming his chest as she turned to him. “Your punishment is to wander this land in the service of who you betrayed.”
As she spoke the words, frigid icy tendrils gripped his heart in a vice as if daring him to speak otherwise. He choked on a breath. Fingers trembling as they clamped around his mouth, attempting to keep it from escaping him. More than once in his solitude he’d wondered. How did it feel for Kagura when he crushed her heart?
Was she the wind laughing at him now?
“And why are you here?” He asked once he’d found his voice and the assurance that his heart wouldn’t slip through his teeth.
Kikyō eyed him silently, slipping her hands into her sleeves, a stately raise of her head. “I am your keeper,” she said. “And your arbiter.”
He stepped forward, and to his surprise, she did not move away. Only tipped her head up further leaving him feeling small despite the difference in their height. “Like the Tatarimokke,” he said, not quite a question though he remembered the golden spirit trailing the souls of children.
She seemed amused at that. “Perhaps.”
He gritted his teeth when he heard the teasing tinge to her voice. It was clear to him that she was there for one purpose and one purpose alone. And it burned. “Why would you accept this lucrative position?” He snapped, incensed further when she raised a skeptical brow at his closeness. “To punish me further?”
Her gaze raked over him. Self-consciousness beginning to rear its head as he glanced down at himself, finding human hands, a bare chest, dark hair slipping over his shoulders, and black hakama tied firmly at his waist. Feet bared, and his skin a tawny beige instead of the sickly grey he’d come to know for so long.
“As difficult as it may be for you to believe,” Kikyō began, snapping him from his thoughts as she eyed him coolly. “My reasons for existence do not revolve around you.”
She spun in a half-arc on her toes and started to walk through the meadow, her hands clasped in front of her. As dignified in death as she’d been in her first life.
“I wish to protect the love that I have found.”
His heart stammered in its beating and the icy grip tightened, choking the venomous words clawing his throat.
“You are a consequence of that desire.”
Cruel. She was cruel from the first to the last. As the distance grew between them, he yearned to be closer to her but kept his distance. Desire is what drove him initially and if it would lead her to her ruin then all the better. His malice was tampered by this sickening twisting feeling for she and she alone. Unbidden, his legs moved. One in front of the other, stumbling after her in the dark and humidity.
He released his fists and straightened up. “Have you not the strength to let go of Inuyasha, Kikyō?” He watched her back for the tension in her shoulders, a sign that his words gained ground, that he was evening the playing field between them. But found nothing. Tongue lead in his mouth, he silently urged her to do something.
Turn around, look at me. Strike me down. Why are you rendering me to this again? This blithering fool who can do nothing but follow after you. Even in death, you won’t release me.
“Selfish to the la—”
“Silence, beloved.”
His throat tightened at those words. He barely thought, or hesitated, before his mouth clamped shut. Her impassive gaze sliced through the air and landed mere centimeters beneath his own. Unconsciously, he grasped at his throat and slipped his fingers over the beaded necklace resting against his collarbone. Jagged teeth tethered onto black twine and at their center —
What should have been where the Shikon no Tama rest was naught but a single magatama bead. A deep obsidian catching in the moonlight as he held it up to his eyes and in its curved reflection, he saw himself.
“It is not Inuyasha who I protect,” she said. “Nor is it Kagome. It’s her.”
He felt a chill wash over him as he looked up to find her at the end of the meadow where the trees parted. Wandering blindly through the thicket, he stood at her side and looked out to the sprawling pasture. A village set further away, lit with amber lanterns, was surrounded by green and paddy fields filled with silver light. Yet oft in the distance, further away from it was a hut, a single window lit. In the field before it, a small child was crouched in the flowers. The red of her bow visible amidst the blooms and though her back was to them, he was certain she would be unaware even if she turned.
“The greatest threat to her is Inuyasha and Kagome’s enemies.” He looked down at Kikyō, his heart aching at the longing in her eyes. “Myself, as I was…” The longing chilled into contempt as she glanced up at him. “And you. Together, we will watch over her.”
He held her gaze for awhile longer then sputtered a laugh of disbelief. “You must be joking.”
Empty as his hatred for Inuyasha had been, he would never agree to being a child’s guardian. Kikyō’s eyes narrowed at his words and his laughter stifled.
“I have never been more serious, beloved.”
His heart clenched and he grunted, grasping his chest as he staggered forward, head bowed in pain. So that is what it was. A bind to the heart. Her brow barely raised as he straightened up again, heaving a testing breath as he stared down at her.
“You bind me but you wish for me to aid you?”
“Onigumo,” she whispered, and his heart stammered. His name on her lips was like the gentle sunlight of spring. Cruel and fleeting, but desirable in the moment. Stricken, he barely noticed when she reached to him until her palm set upon his cheek. “You were bound to me when you seared my name into your heart, and longed for me past death.”
The look she gave made it clear to him that he was ruined. Her fingers slipping down his jaw, thumb brushing against his lower lip as her hand drifted to his collar and gripped the necklace with a harsh tug. Bringing him closer to her narrowed-eyed gaze.
“This is just a formality,” she hissed. “I have found love again. And I will not allow you to tarnish it.”
Onigumo’s eyes slipped shut as her frosted touch punctured his soul. His greatest fears realized no matter how hard he tried to fight against them. He lost track of time as he gazed into her eyes. The child’s shuffling, gasping cries as she played amidst the fireflies, lost on him.
“Could you have ever grown to love me?” He asked, resting his hand against her knuckles. “Inuyasha aside. Your duty to the jewel. Without land, title or mone—”
“You know as well as I that I cared little for what you had,” she interjected, her shoulders tensed and though ti was the reaction he wanted, he felt unsatisfied. Her forehead smoothed, nails scratching against his skin as she pulled her hand away. “I would not be who I was without my duty. Nor the woman you grew to love…” His eyes widened and hers shuttered. “Ask not of me what I cannot answer.”
Her hand fell, drifting to the space between them and Onigumo grasped it as if it was his lifeline. And perhaps it was. Perhaps she was the only thing tethering him to this world.
Would that be wrong? She was the one who brought me back. I begged you not to. Why did you not listen?
He quietly urged her to answer these questions but she remained intent on staring at his hand clasped against her own. As if silently daring him to make his next move. Fighting her was the furthest thing from his mind and as he lifted his other hand to hold her own, she looked up to him in surprise.
“You give yourself obligation even in death…” He seethed. “Can you not rest?”
The words almost sounded like a plea and the coldness thawed in her eyes for a moment giving way to something older. Saddened, pained. He’d seen this before. Reveled in it. But now, it was too much.
“There is much left undone….” She said, casting a sidelong glance toward the field, her hand slipping from his grasp. “Much left unsaid.”
Looking out to the field, his eyes widened as the figure from his memories strode across the grassland. He seemed older than the memories Onigumo had of him. With an assurance that carried in every step, and an intention that had nothing to do with either of them. The child ducked into the tall grass as he strode past, stopping short of where she was hiding and pretending to look about for her. Onigumo huffed. When he chased after him — no — when he chased after Naraku, his nose rarely failed him. Misdirection was easier with how hot-headed he was.
But he changed.
He must have with the patience he showed as the child crept around his back then leapt up against him, climbing like a monkey until her arms set around his neck. A joyous cry while they played, and he carted her around, carrying her back to the hut on his shoulders.
Onigumo peered down at Kikyō. Longing in her eyes replaced by affection and he wondered. If given time, perspective, space, forgiveness — would she look on him the same way?
“We have eternity…”
She blinked slowly then tipped her head up to him. “Would you truly try for that long or give into wickedness?”
Onigumo huffed and shook his head. “You will be the judge of that,” he said dryly, looking ahead at the pair greeted at the hut’s door by a woman donning a miko’s garb. “What is her name?”
Kikyō breathed in deeply and as she sighed, it felt as if the world had come alive.
“Moroha.”