Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
Warning: Naraku family incest... sort of.
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In this sad little world we call home, there is only one true thing.
Desire.
Desire breeds all other things. Hunger, lust, love, hatred, despair, hope, desire binds them altogether in a single web.
Without it, a human being is nothing more than an empty, soulless shell.
The same goes for demons.
---
Naraku is a creature born from desire, impure thoughts and wicked dreams.
His every breath is wanting, his every thought lusting.
His every machination, his every twisted plot and sadistic entrapment is nothing more than the fulfillment of his desires.
The lust of Onigumo, depraved and twisted as it was, no matter how deep Naraku attempts to bury it, is his very essence. That is what he truly is.
From the moment he clawed his way out of the shadows of the earth, his breath was greedy and gasping, hungry for more air than it could take in. His skin was as papery and thin as his courage.
Driven only by the thought of more, Naraku is a paragon of humanity's darkest side.
---
Unlike Naraku, Kagura was born wet and angry and hissing, wanting to be free before she knew what freedom was.
Before he had even released her from the confines of his flesh she had used her teeth and nails to tear her own hole in him, air escaping from within.
The moment she was free with a sickly wet snap Kagura hurled herself forward, onto the ground, naked and still stinking of the clumps of ragged, soaked flesh she fell from.
Naraku watched with utter amusement as she hissed at him with hateful red eyes, every intent to kill in her heart.
So he took it.
Pulling his hand back, he shoved it through her breast, sinking through flesh and bone that he created without hesitation, and grasped at her desire.
Kagura screamed, a heart rending cry of a dying creature moments after it was born.
With a pitying smirk on his face, Naraku ripped out her heart and laughed brutally. "You are mine." He said softly, his words like his miasma, corrupting and suffocating.
Bonelessly, heartlessly, she fell to the floor, gasping and vomiting up blood as she learned what desire really was.
With a soft, cruelly bemused laugh, Naraku flicked his wrist and a fan appeared in his hands. "Take this, and know that you are mine." He hissed like slithering shadows, and tossed her the fan.
She took it without realizing.
---
Naraku had never needed to give Kagura desire. She was desire incarnate, the manifest will of Onigumo's intent to be free, to move like the wind.
In the way that Kanna was without desire, Kagura had nothing but desire.
She wanted, she wanted so badly that she might just bleed of wanting something, anything that she could claim as her own.
And yet Kagura had no will to obtain such a thing, chained as she was by Naraku's own desires.
It was, in all, one of his most fiendish cruelties.
---
The wind, Kagura had decided early on in her not-quite-life, was all powerful.
It directed the strength of the waves, from ripples to tsunamis. Trees bent to its will, whether to sway or break, the wind could decide.
Crops and fields, the lives of humanity depended on the movement of the wind and its followers the clouds, the fall of the rain.
The wind commanded respect, and thus, Kagura demanded it.
Sadly, it would have saved her a lot of grief to be corrected on this error earlier.
---
Sesshomaru, Kagura decided, was the one word answer to her problems.
Kagura, Sesshomaru decided, was a pathetic creature who would probably never know what it meant live for oneself.
Oh, she did have a slim chance in Hell on a snowy day, but she would never really know.
Because after living a life of living for another's desire, its hard to change.
So he refused her, on the grounds that no one who couldn't help themselves was worth helping.
Infuriated, Kagura stormed back into the skies.
If she had thought about it, she might have realized he was doing her a favor.
---
Kagura did everything she could to stay as far away from Naraku when she was near him. Unless called, she refused to be in his presence.
This little quirk of Kagura's bemused him.
So he would purposefully call for her, asking for her thoughts and her presence in ways that would anger her to no end. His lips would always curl ever so slightly, even as her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched over her fan, digging the hard wood into her creased palms.
Then when her anger was at its peak he would pull her to him, brutally smashing her lips to his and bruising them with a derisive laugh.
"You are mine." He would whisper, as always, in her ear like a taunting devil.
Kagura would hiss and spit at him. "I will kill you." She would reply, a hateful lover's caress.
With a smirk, Naraku would grasp her, causing her to shiver in disgust. His grasp would tighten over heart and chest at once, and the sounds of her agonized hatred made vocal caused him to laugh.
"I hate you." Kagura spat, her spittle flying at his cheek with all the disgust and loathing she could conjure.
"But you are mine, and you always shall be." Naraku replied, brushing his lips to her warm throat.
She clawed at him, trying to tear into the flesh she was spawned from as though she could claw her way back in and tear him apart.
Naraku laughed and knocked her down, grasping at her heart tightly, squeezing every last drop of her hatred out like a sponge, spilling out across the floor and into his mouth like sweet, divine nectar.
"That's right... hate me." He murmured, looking at her with eyes full of desire.
At those moments Kagura bitterly realized that she could not stop following Naraku's orders.
---
The wind, Kagura realized later, was not all powerful.
The tides bent to the waves, but the tides were slaves to the Moon in all its dark glory.
The wind, though it ripped trees from their deep roots and hurled them through the air, was nothing more than a tickle when it shoved against the ancient mountains, strong and tall.
And the wind, Kagura realized most bitterly, bent against the vile stone of Naraku's castle.
---
Kagura's believes that life gave her the short end of a very, very important stick and then stole that stick, kicked her out, and dumped garbage on her.
Really, she should count herself lucky.
At least she got the stick for a bit.
---
Tomorrow is all Kagura has left after her heart isn't hers anymore. Tomorrow is the day that Naraku dies and she takes her heart back and soars off into that sun filled horizon to find happily ever after, which is waiting for her just beyond that rainbow and around the corner from true happiness.
Dreaming and wishing and soaring and hoping, Kagura dreams, and that's all she has.
It might have been better for Naraku to have taken those too.
---
When Kagura dies she has her heart back and she understands just how utterly pointless it was to have it.
It went thump, thump, thump. That was it.
There was no stunning, "I-understand-the-meaning-of-the-universe" revelation waiting for her.
There was no sudden wonder about how different the world is if you have a heart all your own.
Really, it was just a few thumps against her ribs, just underneath her breast.
When she dies, she realizes just how ridiculous she's been.
She should count herself lucky.
Most people never do.