Title: Revelation 3:15

Pairing: Naraku/Sesshomaru

Rating: K+

Summary: Hell enjoys Heaven's love, and Heaven enjoys Hell's misery. Post-apocalypse AU.

Length: One-shot [424 words]

Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha.

15. I know what you are doing. You are not cold or hot. I wish you were one or the other.

- Revelation 3:15, New Life Version (NLV)

Revelation 3:15

.

.

.

Why? Why are you still here?

Red, red like blood, red like death, glowing with something like love-that-wasn't.

The world is over.

Sesshomaru hated things being over, and Naraku hated it when others tried to end things, so maybe that's why the world had ended in the first place.

"Come, now," Naraku's tone is patronizing, deadly. His lips are white and cruel and forever cold; the fingers he uses to trace the curve of Sesshomaru's jaw are all the more so, stroking and scratching the skin as they go. "There is nothing left. There is no reason to linger."

So many people just - gone. Vanished. Saved, actually, and the few who remained on the Earth had hearts just as black as the one that beat within his chest.

In that moment, Sesshomaru wants nothing more than to kill him - to raise his fist and break Naraku's smirking, porcelain face into a thousand filthy pieces, to scatter his scarlet ashes over the empty world, to bury his visage in the deepest part of dark memories and move on.

(Sesshomaru knows, from experience, that this won't work, so he restrains himself.)

Why are you still here?

When he doesn't reply, Naraku draws back, a swirl of poison and purple, clearly annoyed. "I've never known you to be a fool, Sesshomaru."

A little girl, bloodied and dirty and almost over, dying beneath the shade of an oak tree. She blames the hunger of wolves.

Sesshomaru blames himself.

"Perhaps you never really knew me."

"Why are you here?" the girl whispers, confused, as Sesshomaru works to drag her body from the edge of death. "You're good. Why are you still here?"

At these words, Naraku laughs; the sound echoes off of the empty roads and the empty homes and the empty graves that surround them, warping it into something ugly and haunting.

"I beg to differ," he sneers, leaning forward once more, stopping just before Sesshomaru's stiff, silent mouth. "I know exactly who you are."

He was here because he had scorned a demon prince, he was here because his nails were caked in the blood of others, he was here to suffer.

Sesshomaru was here because the end of the world had been for him.

"I am over," Sesshomaru says simply. It's half a lie, but it's enough for now - as he turns around and leaves Naraku in the middle of nothing and everything, off to heal a girl who might just save him from himself and the other half of his lie, after all.

.

.

.

a/n: Quick ficlet I wrote in response to a prompt from tumblr. This is the first non-het pairing I've ever written; I hope you guys like it.

Reviews, sharing, etc. are greatly appreciated.