InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Tainted Purity ❯ Chapter 1

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Title: Tainted Purity
Author: LuxKen27
Rating: X
Warnings: Violence, rape, character death
Word Count: 7605
Summary: She was his angel, his innocent, his beautiful purebred saint. He was her worst nightmare made flesh, one from which she could never escape.

Author’s Note: Written for dreaming_trees, who requested “Naraku/Kikyo” during my call for challenges at LiveJournal.

Disclaimer: The Inuyasha concept, story, and characters are copyright Rumiko Takahashi and Viz Media.

Kikyo stood at her kitchen counter, silently chopping vegetables on a plastic cutting board. It was a rare moment of serenity for the young woman, alone in her palatial, seaside mansion, going about the task of making herself dinner. The servants had been dismissed half an hour before, at their customary 8 pm end of shifts, and it would be awhile yet before her husband returned home.

But, she found, this was no ordinary evening.

Her hands trembled violently as she peeled her carrots and potatoes; she could barely hold the knife steady against the board. For all outward appearances, she was merely a clumsy, shy, naïve woman – but on the inside, she was literally quaking with fear.

Stay strong, she told herself, heaving a deep breath and attempting to calm her nerves. After tonight, it will all be over. The nightmare will finally be over.

Tonight, she was finally taking her destiny into her own hands, and she was determined to put a stop to the cycle of cruelty and violence that had consumed her life for the last five years. A long chain of bad choices had led her to this point, had stripped away everything she’d ever known of good in this world, and she had finally been granted an opportunity to end it all.

If she truly thought back on it, she could pinpoint the exact moment her life had taken that irrevocable turn – it was the moment she had decided to take pity on a stranger in the burn unit of the hospital where she was an intern. He had been badly wounded in a warehouse fire, covered head to foot in bandages, but there was just something about him and his will to live that intrigued her. His eyes were the only part of his face not covered by the thick white gauze, and they absolutely captivated her – the color of dark indigo, they seemed to follow her movements around his room with keen, sharp interest. Whispers were flying around the hospital as to his identity when money started pouring in for his care and recovery, enough to finance complete reconstructive surgery over his entire body.

It had taken months, of course, and multiple operations. Kikyo was merely an intern, but fought to be assigned to his case and observe his surgeries. She was by his side through thick and thin, it seemed, and her co-workers worried about her growing attachment to the still not-quite-known man – but she didn’t care. She sensed a kinship with him, a deep resolve within him to fight for his life, to recover and grow stronger and simply be alive again.

Goodness knows, she’d had to pick up the pieces of a shattered life herself. Her parents had been killed in a car accident five years prior, leaving her and her younger sister, Kaede, to fend for themselves. Kikyo was determined they would stay together, even though she was barely eighteen and out of high school. She worked hard, though, going to school and working two jobs, and eked out a meager living to support herself and her then-seven-year-old sibling. It was not her dream, but her lot in life – and she bore her cross with little complaint.

She was there the day they cut off his bandages, and for the first time in ten months, she had a chance to see the face that housed those murky indigo eyes. The surgeons had done their job well – he would heal beautifully, with little scarring, his skin as new and pink as a baby’s. The first thing he did when allowed to open his eyes and examine his face was to turn away from the mirror and reach for her hand.

“My angel of mercy,” he whispered, his voice rusty with disuse, his clasp on her hand strong and warm and electric.

His identity was revealed to the public a few weeks later, when he checked himself out of the hospital – he was Onigumo Naraku, the well-known (and well-feared) businessman, who owned much of the northern island of Japan. He had stakes in everything from hedge funds to investment banks to holdings companies, and had built up an incredibly lavish lifestyle to complement his workaholic tendencies. Whatever he set his mind to, he got in the end – and what he wanted was her.

“You were the one person who stood by my side in my darkest hour,” he said softly, pleading his case at the nurses’ station after signing his release forms. “Please, my pure, sweet Dr. Kikyo, let me repay you that kindness.”

She looked at him then, really looked at him as someone beyond her patient. Here was this handsome, fabulously wealthy man, who had just fought through the battle of his life – and won. His demeanor was calm but confident; his voice soft but firm; his eyes a mesmerizing shade of deep blue. The bond of kinship she’d cultivated blossomed within her, and the fleeting wish to find someone who truly understood her own struggles darted across her mind.

Could this be that man?

“Okay,” she agreed with a slight blush.

And thus, her fate was sealed.

It was, by all accounts, a whirlwind romance. Naraku was certainly indomitable in his pursuit of her. They had dinner almost every evening; he’d surprise her at the hospital with lunch on occasion; he whisked her away to resort towns on the weekend, never forgetting to include her sister on outings. As the winter holidays approached, he took her to meet his parents at his childhood home in the north.

He was charming, handsome, intelligent, and driven. She was flattered by his attention and his thoughtfulness. It was almost impossible not to fall in love with someone who dotted every i and crossed every t, who treated her with dignity and respect, who put her on a pedestal and worshipped the ground she walked on. He called her his angel, his innocent, his beautiful purebred saint.

When he proposed marriage three months later, she accepted without a second thought.

Her friends and co-workers at the hospital were envious of her now-vaulted position, but they spared her no ill will. “It’s only what you deserve,” they assured her. “After devoting your life to others, it’s about time you experienced that same loving devotion for yourself.”

Only her younger sister, Kaede, expressed doubts about their impending union.

“I don’t like that man,” the twelve-year-old declared, mere days before the wedding. She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted, but when pressed for details, she could only shrug in response.

“It’s just a gut feeling,” she whispered.

Kikyo dismissed her fears as nervous jealousy, and assured her sister that she would always be there for her.

She and Naraku were married in a lavish coastal ceremony, and she and her sister promptly moved in to his main home, a palatial mansion by the sea. She looked forward to this next chapter in her life, finally having the burdens of finance and security lifted from her shoulders. She felt invincible and happy and so very, very relieved.

Her first clue that all might not be what it seemed came on her wedding night. Naraku’s style of lovemaking was decidedly rough; instead of being made to feel beautiful and worshipped, she felt rather used and dominated. His appetite was insatiable; it was as if he wanted to possess her, body and soul. He kept her up all night, groping and thrusting and pulling and taking, until her body was stiff and sore.

She attempted to dismiss it in her mind as mere enthusiasm; he had been nothing but gentle and kind during their courtship, though he never allowed himself to grow too amorous in her presence. Surely it was only a matter of having gone so long without that made him act this way…and besides, they were newlyweds. It was to be expected, was it not?

He badgered her to take an extended leave of absence from her job. She’d been working for almost twenty years straight, throwing herself into her education from the day she entered nursery school – sure it was time for a break, no? He sent her on spa days and lazy afternoons in the shopping district, giving her full access to his credit cards. She was hesitant to give up her life’s work and her dream of being a doctor, but she wished to please her husband as well.

“Nothing will make me happier,” he told her, “than taking care of you. You’ve paid your dues, fought the odds, gotten your education, raised your sister. You should take some time for yourself now.”

And so, she embarked, somewhat reluctantly, upon a life of leisure. She had to admit, it felt nice to be pampered, to have access to exclusive parts of town, to buy things she could only dream of owning a few short years ago. She and Kaede, now enrolled in an expensive private high school, spent long afternoons in the park by the pond.

She was happy. Her sister was happy. Her husband was happy.

And all he asked for in return was sex.

All night, every night.

She didn’t know how he could stand it – he hardly ever actually slept. He left the house shortly after dawn broke, stayed at work for twelve to fourteen hours, came home, ate the three-course meal his cook made and saved for him, and then locked her away in their bedroom. She endured as best she could, wishing to please her husband and live up to his idealized version of her – the saint, the angel, the paragon of innocent purity –but found very little satisfaction between the sheets. He was a completely selfish lover, caring only for his needs and wishes and wants; she never had a say in foreplay or positions or duration, and was often left on the cusp of fulfillment. Perhaps more troubling was that he was growing more and more depraved in his actions, which he blamed on extra stress from his job.

As much as she had grown to enjoy the languid pace of her life during the day, she came to dread her evenings. The only relief she had from the strange daily cycle of events was when he was called away on business, a break that mercifully came every few months.

If her first mistake had been falling for him, and her second mistake had been marrying him, her third mistake ultimately proved the most costly – refusing him.

Kikyo would never forget that chain of events she inadvertently started, nearly a year into her marriage. That series of decisions would ultimately come back to haunt her, robbing her of any peace or tranquility she may have felt in living her outwardly perfect life.

It had all started out innocently enough.

She was tucked into bed one evening, idly passing time with a novel as she waited for her husband to come up to bed. He had recently returned from one of his many jaunts to the mainland, in one of his never-ending quests to further his business interests and forge new contracts with clients in the burgeoning Chinese economy. He had seemed unusually happy and relaxed upon his return home, his attitude immediately setting her mind at ease. She was beginning to feel restless about her distance from her career, beginning to doubt her reasons for staying home and essentially becoming a trophy wife – but when he greeted her at the door with a smile and a kiss, she remembered well how much she loved him, and how much he had done for her. He worked hard for her, he’d once confided. He always wanted to see a smile on her face, framed in the angelic beauty that only she possessed.

She heard him enter their bedroom and quietly set aside her novel, lying back on the pillows. She felt light and happy and extremely tired; all she wanted to do was drift into a deep, gentle sleep and dream the night away. She had already started to doze off when Naraku slipped into the bed beside her, his hands already sliding under the hem of her nightgown.

She stirred and sighed, turning away from him even as he groped her breast. “Not tonight, dear,” she murmured, burrowing under the covers.

He froze momentarily, before giving her flesh a painful squeeze. “What did you say?” he asked calmly, quietly.

The unexpected strength of his grip on her shook her completely awake. She stilled, biting her lip as she contemplated what to do…but gods, she was tired, and truly didn’t feel up to a night of rough sex. “Can we just…not, tonight?” she replied softly, striving to keep the quiver out of her voice. “I’m tired.”

Before she knew what was happening, she found herself flat on her back, staring up into her husband’s face. His hand was still firmly planted on her breast, one which he used as leverage to hold himself up over her.

“You’re tired?” he repeated, his voice low and disbelieving. “And what have you done today that would make you so exhausted?”

She swallowed convulsively as she stared up into his deceptively calm face. No trace of tension creased his brow or the line of his jaw; the only clue she had that something was amiss was his eyes – so heavy lidded she could barely see his irises.

“Nothing,” she replied, working hard to keep her emotions under control. She sensed that letting him feel her fear would be infinitely worse than anything else she did. “I’m just tired. I’ve never refused you in all our time together, but I just don’t have your stamina. I’m sorry,” she rushed to add as his eyes closed, “I’m only thinking of your pleasure, and how much I don’t want to disappoint you.”

He nodded, easing away from her. “I understand,” he murmured, once again lying down beside her. “My angel wishes only for perfection.”

The bizarre words made her furrow her brow, but she didn’t respond. She waited, watching him warily, until he fell asleep, before closing her eyes as well.

It was the worst night of sleep she’d had since moving in with him.

The next day began like any other; Naraku left early for work, while Kikyo took the opportunity to sleep in, catching a few hours of decent sleep before dragging herself up and out. She had lunch, went shopping, and found herself in the park, sitting by the pond alone. She just couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling she had as she thought over the strange events of the previous night. Was it really that simple to get what she wanted? All she had to do was ask?

But at the same time, she felt guilty. He worked so hard to provide this languid life for her, eternal payback for being at his side during the worst period of his life. He saw to her every material need, and all he asked in return was what any husband ultimately wanted from his wife. Who was she to deny him his pleasures? He’d gone above and beyond the call of duty, even bringing her sister into their happy home.

She lived in a mansion, was waited on hand and foot, and never wanted for a thing. She should’ve been blissfully happy, not strangely suspicious.

Her apprehension only intensified as she finally returned home that afternoon, to find her home curiously quiet. She looked around the entire first floor, but it seemed their servants had been dismissed early for the day, which only meant one thing – her husband was already home. She squared her shoulders and climbed the stairs, wondering where he could be. She was about to turn towards their bedroom when the sounds of quiet sobbing met her ears instead, drifting down the hallway from her sister’s room.

Her heart began to thump heavily in her chest as she glanced down the hall. An overwhelming force hit her then, a force she hadn’t felt in a very long time – a sister’s protective instinct leaping into action. She moved down the hall at an accelerated pace, fear and panic rising in the back of her mind as she reached for the door.

The scene that greeted her nearly brought her to her knees.

Naraku sat on the corner of her sister’s bed, cool, calm, and collected. Kaede was on the floor between his legs, her hands and feet bound together, tears streaming down her cheeks as he thrust over and over again into her mouth. He held her head steady with one hand, while the other held a gun to her temple.

All movement in the room ceased as the door was pushed open. “What are you doing?!” Kikyo cried, working hard to keep the contents of her stomach firmly in place. “What are you doing to my sister?!”

Naraku shrugged, tightening his grip on Kaede’s hair as he urged his hips forward again.

Kikyo’s vision was bathed in red. She couldn’t even look at her sister, her focus narrowing on the man violating her instead. His demeanor was cold and calculated; if he was finding pleasure in this act, it was not visible in the lines of his face. Even so, in a split second, she made her decision; blood was thicker than water.

She rushed forward, thinking of nothing beyond sinking her nails into the soft flesh of his throat, and how much she would relish the feeling of squeezing the breath from his lungs. She was stopped short when he suddenly pointed the gun at her and cocked the hammer.

His eyes were so dark they were almost black, and his face took a sinister cast.

“What did you expect?” he said in a soft voice, practically a purr. “I have to fulfill my needs somewhere, and my sweet angel of purity rejected me.”

Rage welled up in Kikyo’s chest.

“This really is the perfect arrangement,” he continued, his eyes half-closing as the first signs of rapture flitted across his face. “I can have my perfect, innocent, beautiful angelic wife, and a slutty little whore on the side, without ever leaving the house.”

“She’s thirteen years old,” Kikyo ground out, barely able to hear her voice over the rush of her blood and adrenaline.

Kaede moaned as his grip on her hair tightened, his thrusts becoming more intense.

“A perfect age to start training,” he returned with a hard, satisfied smile. “Even whores need practice.”

He suddenly turned the gun again, shoving it against the side of Kaede’s head once more. “Who told you to stop?” he threatened.

Kikyo chose that moment to take another step forward, but his next words stopped her in her tracks:

“One more step, and I’ll blow her brains out.”

At that moment, Kikyo was forced to look at her sister, crying and disheveled as she sat on the floor, her hands helplessly tied behind her back. Her heart broke, but she was so afraid, felt so helpless. Her worst nightmare was happening before her very eyes, and she was powerless to stop it. Deep down, she knew, no matter how vile the act, that anything was better than death.

It would be over soon; Kaede would live; and then she could help her – somehow.

But she couldn’t watch it – she wouldn’t bear witness to this unspeakable scene.

And so, she closed her eyes and turned away, moving jerkily back to the door and pulling it closed behind her, leaving her sister at the mercy of her wickedly depraved husband. Her own sobs broke through her chest as she stood there, the moans of his satisfaction mixed with Kaede’s fearful gagging meeting her ears in a moment she would never be able to scrub from her memory.

She spent the rest of the day in something close to a catatonic state – she couldn’t think, she couldn’t speak, she could barely even breathe. She was absolutely numb, mercifully free from the choking sobs of horror that had consumed her hours before. She felt like her mind had separated from her body, in fact, as if looking down at herself from a distance.

She watched as she entered her sister’s room later that evening, only to have the girl recoiled in anguish and fear from her comforting touch. She watched as she sank deep into the bathtub following the encounter, trying to scrub the shame and guilt from her skin. She watched as she climbed into the bed she shared with that monster, and wondered what she would do when faced with his demented scrutiny.

Even she was surprised by the strength of conviction in her voice.

“Don’t you ever lay a hand on my sister again,” she fairly growled at him, once he was within earshot.

He only smiled, that same feral smile that had graced his lips some horrible hours before. “You think you can order me around?” he inquired, sliding into the bed beside her. “I own you.”

She curled her hands into fists as she stared him down. Any love or gratitude she once felt was laced with absolute anger and hatred, and she didn’t care that it was writ large across her face.

“Ah, but don’t you see?” he continued, grabbing her waist and jerking her hard against him. “It’s all your fault anyway, for denying me my needs and forcing me to seek other outlets.”

“Do whatever you want to me,” she conceded, pushing past the hard lump that had risen in her throat. “Just leave Kaede alone, or so help me God – ”

He closed one hand around her neck. “You’ll what?” he sighed, his breath hot against her ear. “Kill me?” He chuckled as he reached down, yanking her legs apart and settling his weight over her abdomen. “I’d like to see you try.”

Don’t tempt me, she thought, though the pressure at her throat prevented her from voicing her murderous intentions.

“But no, my beautiful angel of mercy wouldn’t be capable of such a thing,” he purred. “The woman who faithfully sat at my bedside while I lay burned beyond recognition? Who fought to be assigned to my case, who watched with bated breath as my new face and body was revealed to the world? She has nothing but goodness and decency in her heart, a purity even my depravity can’t taint.”

He turned his hand upward, his thumb and forefinger pressing into the sides of her jaw, lifting her chin. “To hold such a rare beauty in my arms is a gift beyond measure,” he continued. “I fantasize about corrupting all that innocence, tearing down that heavenly visage one shred at a time…to see that angel scream in fear and horror and wanton lust…”

Her stomach took a sickening turn as she felt his cock stir against her thigh. Her breath was long and slow and rugged as he pressed down on her throat, tiny black circles beginning to dot the periphery of her vision. She fought with every fiber of her being to keep the fear clawing at her gut buried below her surface – it was painfully obvious that he enjoyed the absolute power and control he exerted over her body.

She gasped then, pain bolting up her spine as he penetrated her. “To turn my angel into my whore,” he growled, his rhythm already furious and desperate. He was moving too hard, too fast – he wouldn’t last very long. “That is my desire.”

He exploded within her, and she thought she would die as his grip tightened around her neck. She didn’t move or respond, lying as still as a corpse beneath him. As he recovered, he laughed at her resistance.

“You are mine,” he said with a chilling calmness. “You are my wife, you live in my home, you spend my money – you owe me.”

She stared up at him with dull, defeated eyes. He was unrecognizable to her, so incredibly different from the man she had married. Maybe her fate was sealed, but she knew if she had the chance to save her sister, she would take it, consequences be damned. She didn’t care that Kaede hated her and would probably never forgive her for being unable to stop the violence of the afternoon.

She would lay down her life before she allowed her sister to be harmed again by this man.

“Do whatever you want to me,” she repeated in a lifeless tone. “Just leave Kaede alone.”

His dark eyes gleamed as he considered her words once more. “You will take her punishment for her?”

Kikyo didn’t even blink. “I would do anything for her.”

“Anything?” he taunted again, and she felt herself split in two, the hazy consciousness of her mind drifting into the darkness of the night.

“Anything,” she promised, hoping she would live to see the next day.

She had no recall of the dark, wee hours of that evening, and suspected she would never fully recover those memories. Not that she needed yet another set of thoughts, sensations, or actions to haunt her. It was all she could do to crawl from the bed the next day, long after her husband had left for work. She managed to get herself upright after a long, hot bath, and her mind finally sprang into action.

She knew she had to protect her sister, and she would endure the worst of his tactics for the rest of her life with a peaceful heart if she could just get her to safety. She dressed carefully and left quietly, not even wanting to alert the servants to her movements.

Once outside in the real world, she mobilized – she went to Kaede’s school and sought permission to let her leave early; once granted, the girls headed for their sacred pool in the park. Neither spoke on the way, but Kikyo could feel her sister’s resentment and suspicion. Still, she forged ahead with her plan, knowing the imminent danger they were both in if Naraku ever found out.

“You have to leave the house,” Kikyo informed her sister as they sat in the shaded area near the path. “I have a bit of money saved, and I’ll give you everything I can get out of the accounts today.”

“Where will I go?” Kaede asked softly, kicking a pebble from the gravel pit under the bench.

Kikyo’s heart wrenched in her chest. Her sister was so young – too young to be experiencing this sort of horror firsthand. She loathed Naraku for stealing her innocence, and vowed to make him pay for that one deed above all others. “You can always go to Jii-chan’s, with our aunts,” she replied. “They’ve wanted you since Mom and Dad died, and they would welcome you with open arms.”

Kaede nodded slowly. “What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Kikyo said. “We have to focus on getting you to safety as soon as possible.”

“I heard you,” Kaede said softly, tears threatening behind her eyes. “I heard you crying last night.”

Kikyo wrapped her arms around her sister. “It’s going to be okay,” she assured her.

Kaede hugged her back, her tears pooling on her sister’s shoulder. “Don’t leave me, sister,” she whispered into her neck.

Kikyo could only hold on, wrapping herself in the small comfort of her sister’s embrace one last time. Time seemed to stand still as they clung to one another…but even small comforts come to an end. Their next stop was the bank, before heading to the train station.

Her last image of Kaede was her sister’s tearstained face in the window of the train carriage, as she left town with only the clothes on her back. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t even begin to make up for what had happened the day before, but she knew it was her only option. She loved her sister and wanted more than anything to stay with her – but she couldn’t knowingly put her in danger.

The rest of the day was a blur as she fought to come up with some sort of escape plan of her own. Naraku had effectively cut her off from the world beyond his cushy estate; her leave of absence from her job had cost her that internship and brought a halt to her schooling. She had no friends, beyond her fellow vapid wives that she sometimes ran into at the spa. Her only family she’d just sent away to live with distant relatives.

She was stuck. She was alone. She was at the mercy of an evil she never even dreamed could exist.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. She inquired at a few of the lower-end, low income clinics on the downtrodden side of town, leaving hastily scrawled resumes with the harried, overworked assistants. She put in applications everywhere she could think of, regardless of skill required, and could only hope one of these jobs would give her a lifeline outside of the stifling, luxurious lie she had been living for nearly two years.

She was shocked to arrive back at the mansion and once again, find it eerily quiet. She didn’t know where he came from, but he didn’t allow her to even get up the stairs before slamming her against a wall, his hand once again closed around her throat.

“My angel,” he began, his voice sugary sweet, his eyes wide with feigned innocence. “You always want to save everyone, don’t you?”

She didn’t respond; he would never get Kaede’s location out of her, no matter what he did.

“What do you think you’re doing, applying for jobs all over town? I provide for your every comfort and need,” he continued.

She reeled at the accusation. “How did you know about that?” she asked, fighting to keep her eyes on his, to not cower in the face of his false concern.

“Why, my dearest saint, what do you think I do for a living?” he implored with dripping sarcasm. “I have a hand in a great many different businesses, and associate quite heavily with yakuza forces throughout the city.”

Her eyes widened and her stomach flipped as his grim smile only grew larger. “You will never escape me,” he vowed. “You are mine. Once you accept this little fact, my sweet, your life can continue on its merry, leisurely way.”

He grabbed her shoulder, forcing her up the stairs. She had no doubt in her mind what fate awaited her, but she refused to show her fear, anguish, dread, or horror. That night, she defied him the only way she still could, and she learned quite acutely just how much of a monster he truly was.

For the last three years, she had lived with a demon. His appetite for violence and cruelty seemed to know no bounds. He took almost sadistic pleasure in punishing her for her continued defiance. It enraged him that he could not break her spirit, that he could never truly “turn his angel into his whore,” as he’d so crudely put it all those years before. No matter what he did, she lay beneath him like a stone cold corpse, her eyes as full of insolence as her body was dull and lifeless.

Somehow…it worked. She perfected the art of separating her soul from her body, of going numb whenever he approached her, of enduring his attacks – physical or sexual – with a sort of self-induced amnesia. He was just as willful as she, but beneath all of that grit and anger and evil beat the heart of the man he had once been – a man who couldn’t drive himself to truly torture her or kill her.

Instead, he locked her away in her ivory tower, isolating her completely from the outside world in a last-ditch bid to possess her soul as he did her body. She had no access to the phone, or paper and pen, or any electronic device. Her only human interaction was with the servants, and even their numbers were reduced to a trusted few, lest one of them grow a conscience and find sympathy with her plight.

Despite his threats to the contrary, Naraku began to take other lovers, to vent his frustration over her continued willfulness. He often came home reeking of alcohol and smoke and other women’s perfume, not bothering to wash himself of their scent before laying with her. It was absolutely vile, but Kikyo stayed strong in her convictions. She only had her pride left, and to let him have that would be to let him win.

The grueling pace of life had taken its toll on her, physically. Once a bright, happy, healthy med student, she had been reduced to a pale, gaunt, frail wisp of a woman. Her skin was almost translucent, her hair long and unkempt, her features pinched and drawn. She was dead inside, and had been for years, but she would never give in. As long as she drew breath, she would defy her husband. Her spite kept her going on those darkest of days, and faintly, she wondered if she would ever find a way out of her personal hell.

And then, one day, opportunity literally fell in her lap.

The servants had the day off, and Naraku was mercifully away, attending to business concerns in Russia. Kikyo was sitting outside under a shady tree, silently gazing out over the ocean. She didn’t know how long she had sat there, only that it felt so wonderful to be out of doors, in the sun and wind. For some small moment of time, she was free, no longer the bird in the gilded cage, and she wanted to soak up every last moment of peaceful tranquility.

“Oh! Sorry!” cried a voice, seconds after something hard and heavy landed in her lap. She looked down, her breath catching in her throat as she found herself staring into striking golden eyes. In an instant, she felt a connection, and her heart began to pound in dread.

“I didn’t see you there, ma’am,” continued the voice connected to the eyes, a rather gruff tone for so lovely a visage. The man sat up, brushing long, silvery hair out of his eyes as he regarded her with open curiosity. “Are you the lady of the house?”

She nodded slowly, bitter bile rising in her throat at the irony of his innocent question. “And you are?”

He scrambled to his feet, reaching for the ladder at his side. “I’m Inuyasha, I’m on the landscaping crew,” he explained. “I was just working on this section of trees, and I guess the ladder slipped against the bark. I apologize, ma’am, I won’t bother you again.”

He bent down to grab the shears that had fallen next to her knees, and impulsively, she latched onto his wrist. “No, please,” she murmured, her eyes trained to the tanned skin that seemed to glow beneath her pale fingers. “Stay awhile, and talk to me.”

Inuyasha hesitated, casting a skeptical glance behind him, no doubt where the rest of the grounds crew was toiling away. After a moment, he shrugged, sinking down beside her and holding his clippers in his lap.

Thus began a most unlikely friendship of sorts. Every morning, Kikyo would look out of her window, spotting the crew her husband had hired to completely re-lay the landscape around his mansion, and head outside to sit near them. Every afternoon, Inuyasha would sit down beside her like an obedient pet. They talked about everything and nothing between long periods of silence; she prodded into his background and listened with unrestrained fascination as he told her about his life and himself, his struggles and his triumphs, his art and his love. His passion was working with the earth; his spirit was one with the trees and plants he surrounded himself with. He was beautiful to observe, even beyond the first blush of his unusual coloring.

Slowly, Kikyo found herself remembering what it was like to be passionate, to have dreams, to toil and struggle and succeed. It was as if her heart was reawakening after a long period of comatose slumber, and it scared and excited her all at the same time. Here was a companion who made her feel alive again, and all too soon – he would be gone from her world.

At the end of one unusually quiet day, he’d surprised her, leaning over to kiss her as he made to stand up. His mouth was warm and gentle against hers, his touch shy and unsure, but it was enough to unlock the last of her secrets.

She had been foolish to think she could hide this newfound happiness from her husband. He’d noticed, almost immediately, the fresh gleam in her eye and the smile she constantly fought to disguise. He continued to use and abuse her, even more infuriated that her spirit only seemed to grow stronger in spite of the constant barrage of pain he subjected her to. She only had to close her eyes and break away from her body, her mind floating off to some unknown place where she could revel in Inuyasha’s gentle embrace.

Whatever happiness she found in those encounters and fantasies was decidedly dashed when Naraku upped the ante. If he couldn’t have her, body and soul, then no one would, and he set in motion the first of many plans to finally do away with her.

She had been abducted, drugged, raped, and beaten on numerous occasions. She’d stared down more barrels of semi-automatic machine guns than she could even count anymore. Men and women both were her intended murderers – yakuza assassins, drug-addled prostitutes, convicted criminals. They all had something in common, however, some tiny piece of conscience tucked deep inside their blackened or desperate souls, some reed-thin voice in the back of their minds that told them: she wasn’t worth killing.

He was always there, however, lurking in the shadows. The moment they hesitated, he didn’t, putting a bullet in the backs of their heads for daring to defy his orders. She never quite understood why he didn’t just end her life alongside those of her would-be killers…but he would merely scoop up her battered body and hold her close to his chest, murmuring promises to take care of his angel of mercy as she had once taken care of him.

It was almost to the point where she wished for death just to end her suffering. The fear and paranoia her husband had instilled in her through these plots on her life had pushed her near her breaking point.

Inuyasha found out, somehow. His work there had finished months before, but he came by every few weeks to check on the gardens, and her. He had grown suspicious of her nervous behavior and rapidly declining appearance. During one of his routine maintenance calls to her palatial prison, he found his way up to her room, where she lay in bed, recovering from her latest round of injuries. She could sense his desire to play her knight in shining armor, to ride in and rescue her from the horrors of her life, and couldn’t quite find it in her heart to tell him it was a lost cause. She was damaged goods. She would never be to him what he wanted her to be. It had taken five long, insistent years, but finally – she was ready to die.

But Inuyasha wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. He carried her from the bed to the shower, unwilling to leave the mark of his scent anywhere Naraku might linger. He leaned against the bone-dry wall, holding her as gently has he could, and quietly begged her to continue to fight.

“Let me save you,” he whispered. “Let me help you. I love you.”

I love you. The words resonated through her soul, bringing back memories of her sister, her parents, her first true love…finally, she relented, accepting the warmth of his persistent hope, allowing it to pervade her soul. Together, they hatched a plan for her escape…

…a plan they would ultimately put into motion tonight.

And so, she stood at her kitchen counter a few weeks later, trying to focus on chopping vegetables for her dinner. She wasn’t really hungry, but needed something to do with her hands as she waited. In the end, she would not fight anymore; she could not face her husband and his diabolical plots head-on and emerge the victor. Her will to defy him was weakening by the day, and maybe he sensed he had already won.

No, in the end, she would slip into the night like a ghost; she would vanish from the face of the earth. She would go stay with her sister for the evening, before being spirited away to Inuyasha’s relatives on the mainland, complete with a new identity.

And yet, she couldn’t help but feel anxious as she stood there. Time seemed to crawl by. There was only a narrow window between the dismissal of the servants and Naraku’s usual arrival home in which they could act, and it seemed like it would never come.

She started when she heard the buzz of the doorbell. Who could that be? she wondered to herself, standing as still as possible and straining her ears. It rang again, and her stomach plummeted to her knees.

She took a deep breath, steeling her spine before moving out of the room. The bell rang again as she moved across the foyer, its sound insistent and almost desperate to her ears. He was never supposed to ring the bell, she thought wildly as she approached the door. Something must’ve happened, something must’ve gone wrong.

Never before had she so urgently wished for her intuition to be wrong.

She opened the door and found Inuyasha on his knees, his hands bound behind his back, a gun pointed to his head. Standing beside him was the cool, calm, collected form of her husband, a cruel little leer twisting his lips.

“Now, now,” Naraku began, his voice that disgusting mix of calm and sarcasm, “what do we have here, my sweet?” He grabbed a fistful of Inuyasha’s hair and pulled, jerking his head back and earning a growl of anger and pain in response. “Did you honestly think you could escape from me?”

She heard nothing over the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears. Her heart was lodged in her throat, beating rapidly, threatening to bring along with it the contents of her stomach. Her vision was bathed in red as glanced down at Inuyasha, her memories flickering, exchanging him for the image of her baby sister, also caught in such a vulnerable position by this horrible man. The tears that poured down Kaede’s face that day now made tracks on Inuyasha’s cheeks, and something inside of her snapped.

With a wordless, shrieking cry, she lunged forward, burying her knife in her husband’s leg. At the same moment, a shot rang out, blasting in her ears with deafening force. She felt like she was moving in slow-motion, landing heavily against Inuyasha’s half-bound form as her weapon hit home. She pulled down on it as hard as she could, cries of anguish and pain filling the spacious hallway as the three of them tumbled to the ground.

How long they lay there, she didn’t know. She came around what seemed like hours later, lifting herself up off the collapsed form of her savior, looking beyond him, focusing on the hilt of her knife. It stood, proud and true, from its final resting place, soaked in a pool of dark blood. Her eyes angled over to Naraku’s chest, waiting…watching…dreading…

Nothing.

She couldn’t quite believe her eyes as she stared, waiting to see even the slightest rise and fall break the stillness of the air. She heaved herself up from the pile of bodies, half-crawling, half-skimming closer to Naraku’s, and reached out with a violently shaking hand to feel for a pulse.

Nothing.

Her relief was palpable, an almost crushing weight in her chest. She exhaled sharply and fought for breath, clear air to fill her lungs and push back the bile still lodged in her throat.

“Inuyasha,” she choked out, turning back towards him. “Inuyasha, we’re free.” She drew close to him, this white knight, this man who loved her so unconditionally, who wanted nothing more than her happiness. His beautiful silvery hair fanned out around his head, the ends seeming to shimmer in the diffused light from the hallway.

“Inuyasha,” she said again, reaching to untie his hands, fumbling with the rope. She glanced up, registering for the first time the dark streaks of blood that sullied his hair and covered his face.

No, she mouthed silently, pushing herself up from her spot on the ground, taking in the full extent of his injuries. Blood still trickled from the single gunshot wound at his temple. “No!”

One more innocent life lost, one more person’s blood on her hands. It was her lot in life, her cross to bear, her lonely road to walk.

Kikyo had indeed vanished from the face of the earth that night, ceasing to exist right alongside her tormentor and her savior. It was the dull husk of a woman who rose from the bloody scene instead, putting one silent foot in front of the other as she calmly walked away from the carnage.

The angel of mercy had finally become the angel of death.