LuxuriaGulaAvaritiaAcediaIraInvidia, and SuperbiaThey were well made for the extravagance.
Ira
"One upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl…"
Sometimes, she would sit at the Well, wondering why it was denying her home to her. But that was just pretending. An act. She knew she was repenting for her sins. One by one, lined up like the death row, slowly marching towards their doom.
She was among the chained.
The ancient, rotting wood left splinters in her fingers. She guessed that showed how attached the Well was to her. But she couldn't stop running her hands over the lip of it, immersing herself in times long past and never to come again. A memory she couldn't shake. A place she couldn't go. A life she couldn't have. The Well represented a lot of things she couldn't do.
So she looked into its murky, shadowed depths as if it had the answers to the universe, silently hoping that it would tell her something, give her something tangible to hang onto.
But no, what's done is done, and she was far past done. She was reaching the boundary of being in eternity by now.
He grabbed her shoulder hard, and uncaring, just like his soul. "Did I say you could leave the castle?" His voice was like a caress. But that caress turned ugly and wanting for something that she couldn't give. He made her feel violated.
"No," she whispered, turning dead eyes to him. Three centuries ago, she would have hurt him. Even now, her heart wanted to hurt Naraku the way he hurt her, wanted to torture him, make him scream and plead and beg for mercy, she wanted to make him just like her. But 300 years is a long time; too long for a human, and even longer for a broken soul.
While she had lost the ability to forgive, she had gained the ability to block it out. She wondered if she should mourn that fact.
Naraku's cruel red eyes hardened, corners of his mouth lifting slightly. "So you deliberately ignored me?" he asked softly.
"No," she repeated.
His hand on her shoulder tightened. She knew that she would suffer because of it.
"One upon a time the girl felt a man's wrath…"
Three new brutal, jagged scars ran down her back, added to her steadily growing collection. The Tama within her pulsed angrily as she lay broken, naked, on the floor. She hated that thing more than anything she ever had hated in her life; more than anything she ever thought she was capable of hating. More than even Naraku.
And yet, there it was, lying out in the open, like a sin. She could count every one of the seven deadly vices she had ever committed. She wasn't particularly fond of the fact.
His feet appeared in her line of sight.
Lust. Greed.
"Get up."
Gluttony. Envy.
"I said, get up, miko."
Sloth. Pride.
He yanked her body up by the roots of her hair, and she could almost swear her bones were cracking all over again.
Wrath.
"You will obey me," the hanyou hissed into her face. She didn't look into his eyes. She wouldn't goad him. No nonononono…
No was the only word the existed between them.
When she didn't respond, he snarled angrily, slamming her back onto the floor, kicking her side vengefully as she crumpled. He glared down to her, "Never ignore your master. Lie there until you learn that, human." He straightened, and walked away.
There was no place in the world, at that moment, than she would rather be than the cold, stone ground.
"Once upon a time, the girl ran away…"
Once again, she was the first to witness his malice. He was killing. Again.
And again and again and again and again.
The blood dripped out of the corpse in slow, languid drops, running over his hands and onto the floor. It was like a veil to her eyes. Beyond it, all she saw was darkness. And Naraku clutched to body proudly, because she knew he was insane, and because she knew that he could not ever feel anything more than pride at killing. He was well bred for it. She was stuck in hell because of it.
For 300 years.
The Jewel pulsed within her.
She knew her place though. She knew who was supposed to be, and who she wasn't. Her contract was made of hell and caustic emotions. There was no room for love.
This, though, she thought as she glanced at Naraku's insanity, was abundant. She was afraid that she was being sucked in, too. For three centuries, three long, lonely centuries, she had run away from the fate she knew loomed like an obelisk on the horizon. And at the brink of this new, repetitive century, she was tired of trying to escape. She was almost ashamed that she had fallen so low. But she had found after all this time, that when the light disappeared and only dark, whispering shadows remained… you were willing to gain it back, no matter what you had to do.
Locking eyes with her malevolent captor, she tried to convey the massage she couldn't bear to say out loud.
I'm ready to be like you.
And she couldn't even cry.
"Once upon a time, the girl fell into a spider's web…"
Heavy, ragged breathing. Blood. So much blood. And destruction hung in the air like heavy mist.
'Give me a sign that this isn't our destiny.'
But destiny or God or karma or whoever the hell was there didn't respond. And so she closed her eyes, bracing herself for the smell of decay, and stepped into the village. She knew that nothing ever would.
Everything was out the open. Bodies, blood, and so much hatred…
It was everything that Naraku represented. Everything he stood for. And everything she was starting to become. Oh no, the seven deadly sins weren't just what they represented, it was what they lived by. She couldn't escape.
He stood in the middle of the carnage, once again cloaked in blood. His heart was stained by its red glow. He was the incarnation of death.
And suddenly, he was before her, with his vile, bloody hand upon her cheek in mock-romance. "Do you like it? I created this picture all for you."
Her eyes widened, unable to shake the shudder of disgust that ran through her like an electric shock. "No." All she could do was deny it. Because he couldn't. He couldn't do this. Some God somewhere had to be trying to stop him… trying to make him have a heart…
But no, there is no God to help you, to help them, TO SAVE YOU FROM SUFFERING THE SAME WAY…
He was the voice that screamed inside her head; like a carousel that never stopped, he just kept going in circles, while every rotation dragged her closer to where he was.
Naraku smiled sadistically. "Do you love it?"
She wanted her heart to stop beating. And his, too.
"Yes."
Insanity seemed like such a better alternative to darkness.
So, he was killing. Again.
And again and again and again and again.
And she could pretend not to see, not to hear, not to feel what he was doing to the world. She could pretend that she would die tomorrow for this. She could pretend that her vision was tinted red from love, not from blood.
She could pretend she didn't deserve this.
"Once upon a time, the girl couldn't escape…"
She crouched over his inhuman body, breathing heavily and coughing blood. He looked shocked that she wouldn't even attempt, no, even think she would do such a thing.
"Why?"
Such a simple question.
So she laughed in Naraku's face. Laughed in the face of his death, and in the face of her own. She'd lived for five centuries, and that was 425 years too long, so she was tired, tired, oh so tired. And he deserved this.
They both did.
"Because this is where it ends."
With that, she dug the Shikon no Tama out of her body with the knife she had stolen. And when she held the blood-covered jewel in her palm, it was no longer glowing a soft pink, deceptively innocent, but a deep black… not even attempting to fake decency.
His crimson eyes widened, but without the Tama bond they shared, time caught up with him… and he rotted. The low-level demons that made up his flesh had past their expiration died long ago. He had died from the inside out.
She clutched the Jewel of Four Souls in her pale hand, smiling briefly, before she could no longer hold off time either. Her body gave out in an instant.
She died with her skeleton slumped over the hanyou's body.
"Once upon a time, the man and the girl were no more…"
A/N: The ironic thing is that I don't even like dark chocolate. A mystery. Ahh, oh well. I like angst too much.