InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Appetizers? On Me! ❯ License to Kill ( Chapter 7 )

It was the village children who first made her aware of his existence. `The monster in the cave' they called him. The description was fitting enough, but at the time she couldn't possibly have known the extent to which they had so perfectly described him.

 

Thinking they were bringing her along on another one of their imaginative adventures, she'd allowed them to lead her by hand away from the village, through the fields of flowers and grass to an unassuming cave carved into the side of a hill. There they'd left her, too frightened to venture past its threshold again. With a patient smile she'd obliged and told them she would go in alone to root the monster out. They'd nodded, clutching each other a few feet from the entrance to watch enrapt as she ventured bravely on ahead alone.

 

She smelled him before she saw him. The stench of burnt flesh assaulted her the moment she stepped foot inside the dank cave and it didn't take long before she found the source. It was obvious why the children had been afraid. Stretched out on the earthy floor of the cave was the body of a man, covered with blackened skin and raw seeping wounds. Her features softened as she knelt at his side, convinced he was already dead.

 

It seemed impossible that anyone could survive such horrible burns. It was obvious whoever had brought him to this place intended for it to be his tomb. If he wasn't dead already when they brought him, they'd left him to die from starvation or infection - whichever killed him first.

 

She felt nothing but sympathy in her heart for this faceless man she didn't know. Was he someone's father? Someone's husband or friend? What kind of life had he led up until the moment of his accident? Had it been virtuous? Or was it filled with crime and deceit? It was impossible to know from looking at what was left. Death was an incredibly equalizer.

 

With one last glance around the cave, she made ready to return to the children to advise them that the `monster' had indeed been vanquished. However, the sound of a rasping breath made her pause. Torn, she stared down at the body she'd thought already dead and watched the minimal rise and fall of his chest. Touching her hand to the only unburned portion of his body, the spot directly overtop of his heart, she spoke to him in a calm reassuring tone.

 

“My name is Kikyou. I'm the local miko from the village. Do you understand?”

 

“Yessss,” was the rasped reply, hissed from the depths of a throat scorched by smoke and fire.

 

“Are you in pain?”

 

The silence that followed seemed to indicate that the answer should've been obvious. Her face softened with sympathy once more as she studied his injuries. There was nothing she could do to heal them. He would ultimately succumb to them, and soon. At best she could make him comfortable in his last hours or days, however long it took for him to pass on. Resolving to do just that, she offered the slit of an eye that was staring up at her a gentle smile.

 

“I need to return to the village for bandages and food but I will return shortly. What is your name?”

 

“Oniguomo.” His single dark eye darted back and forth in its socket, absorbing every inch of her visage. She felt his gaze on her and brushed off the instinctual response to feel repulsed by it. She was a miko. It was her duty to uphold her vows to help those in need. Disgusting and repulsive as he may be in appearance, this man, Oniguomo, deserved her help and whatever small bit of comfort she could offer him in his final days. She stood to leave and was surprised by the touch his hand against her foot. His fingers left bloody marks against her pristine white tabi socks.

 

“So you will help me?” he asked, sounding hopeful and disbelieving all at once. She smiled down at him and discreetly moved her foot out of his reach.

 

“Of course.”

 

----

 

In the long hours that passed between her visits he occupied himself with imagining what she must smell like. The fire had destroyed his nose and his sense of smell along with it, but he liked to think that if he could breathe her in she would smell pure and untainted, earthy and clean. Kikyou - the beautiful, virginal miko.

 

Her delicate features, so refined and perfect in their design, had looked down upon him that first day with such sympathy and tenderness. He'd always been a vain man, and her face spoke to his vanity. He'd once been a handsome specimen and she would have looked perfect at his side. Were he not stuck in such a useless body he would've already made her his.

 

During the long nights it was visions of her body entwined with his that staved off the merciless waves of pain. It was her face he dreamt of and yearned for upon waking. Even knowing what he was, a bandit of the vilest form, she returned daily, like clockwork, to tend his wounds and feed him spoonfuls of broth to keep him alive with her well-intentioned ministrations. Whether she realized it or not, he'd already staked his claim on her. For him there could never, and would never, be any other.

 

In all of his travels he'd never once met a woman who possessed such beauty and grace. Gods, what he would have done to have a body once again. One that would let him pursue her the way he wanted, defile her the way he wanted. There was something about her that fulfilled every one of his impure desires, and his pure ones too.

 

He wanted her to know what it meant to yearn for another until your heart ached for them. He wanted to educate her on the pleasures of the flesh and stake a claim on her innocence. He wanted to see no one but himself reflected in her eyes. He wanted many things, but all of them were impossible because he was stuck in such a useless body that already stank like death. She never said as much, but he could tell it in the way she breathed shallow whenever she drew near and wrinkled her nose as she changed his oozing bandages.

 

He was repulsive, repugnant right down to his soul, and yet, he'd never wanted something so badly in his entire life. Even as the disgusting creature that he was he deserved to have her, or so he reasoned. The gods owed him at least that much for forcing such a miserable, agonizing death upon him.

 

He spent his days immersed in such thoughts until she arrived and then his mind would be at peace, if only for a short while. Perhaps it was his overpowering desire for her or his overwhelming feelings of disgust towards his morbid condition that brought the demons to him on that last day. He'd lifted his heavy eyelid expecting to see her at his side and saw the face of some vicious creature instead. It snarled at him as it read the depths of his soul's darkness through his eye.

 

“So, you wish to be free of this form? You want a body so you can pursue that miko?”

 

“Yes.”

 

The demon abandoned his side to confer with the others who hovered around him like vultures circling their prey. The demon returned a short time later and nodded in agreement, a cunning glint now lighting his yellow eyes.

 

“If we give you a body, what will you give us in return?”

 

What did he have left to give but the only part of himself that'd been left unchanged by the fire? Black, tainted and impure though it was, his soul would be a feast for demons such as these. A small price to pay if it meant he could have everything he ever wanted. A body and Kikyou at his side - he had no need for eternal peace if such a thing could be his fate. Once she belonged to him he would be forever satisfied. All he needed was a body and all they needed was his soul to devour.

 

“My soul. It is yours to have if you provide me with a body I can move in.”

 

The demon nodded in agreement, sealing their cursed pact.

 

As the hoard poured into his body he began to laugh. It was all too perfect. He would finally have his heart's greatest desire and with his new body he would possess a beauty and power that would finally make him her equal. He practically shivered with ecstasy as he envisioned her response to his new form.

 

He could picture the scene clearly in his mind - he'd walk up silently behind her while she was picking flowers in the field outside the cave. He would touch his hand to her shoulder and she'd turn and look upon him with eyes that recognized instinctively who he was without his needing to say a word. He would invite her into his embrace to thank her for taking care of him so diligently and she would oblige, unable to resist the pull of attraction between them. Then there, in that field, he would take her innocence. He would make her his and start them down the path to their future.

 

At his side she would make a beautiful bride. He would no longer know the pain of yearning for her touch. He would not suffer the hollowness he felt during her absences. The world could not force him down, leaving him to bow beneath the weight of its trials. She would complete his existence, the perfect yin to his yang, and he would be satisfied for the first time in his miserable life. In her eyes he saw their future and in her smile, perfection. He deserved nothing less.

 

He felt nothing but euphoria in those last moments, thinking of all that could be and what would be between them. It was as the final demon licked its lips and sunk its teeth into what remained of his soul that it whispered the ugly truth he had never considered.

 

“Her heart already belongs to another.”

 

“Traitorous bitch.”

 

It was in the flash tidal wave of rage, pain, loss and betrayal that followed that cruel revelation, that the monster known as Naraku was born.