happy christmas, speed. sincerely, your secret santa. (:
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Pairing: Orochimaru/Sakura
Prompt: beauty and the beast
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x ( her darkness ) x
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written by seleneswan
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Perhaps her first mistake was that she believed in him.
Perhaps that was her final mistake.
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He was cold and clammy and gripping and intense and desperate. He lived in a world of darkness. He lived in a world where he treasured everlasting life, treasured the unnatural.
His hands weren't his, his face was a mask. His basement was filled with bodies.
His windows were shut, always. The sun on his skin felt unnatural, felt cold.
But…
But she was real. She was real, but she was made of dreams. She was tangible, but she was out of reach.
She was such a paradox, such a contradiction…just like existence itself.
She was ethereal. She was the crisp bright light of life peering through the shutters of a closed off place. She was as vivacious as the wind, warm as the blood that coated his fingers, sharp as the cold air. She was so bright, so bright.
She tied the strings to life, and he cut them. She healed, and he dealt destruction.
And he couldn't help but be drawn to her.
He wanted her.
He would have her.
And so he took her, just like he took so many others.
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A time ago, he took one much different. One who had once had all of life in him. He was full of love and broken dreams and broken promises. He was teeming with a wanting, a thirst for the life he had once had.
He had so much energy, so much will and power and drive.
His name was Sasuke, and he—he, too, had known the girl made of dreams.
And now, he had become the body that he wore beneath his deadened skin.
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She was beautiful. His fingers traced her jaw, her cheekbones, the curve of her neck, the collarbone. She was exquisite.
Really, she had nothing special about her. Her power was limited to her fists, but she was weak. She had no special, coveted bloodline. She was mundane.
But she wasn't.
She was filled with vitality, something he hadn't seen in a long time.
Her eyes opened. She gasped.
A sharp intake.
Her skin paled.
"Hello, Sakura." His own voice was different, now. The voice of another.
She was frozen.
"Welcome home."
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He was different. Even in her state of terror, she recognized that. She was still as sharp as ever, and as the skin of his face drooped to one side, as he began to age a little in his body, she noticed he was different.
So in the following week, when he grew angry with her, when he became furious with her insubordination, with her attempted treachery…it became clear.
His eyes, golden and filmy flashed, flickered, spun into a dark crimson, black spots rotating in them.
She sucked in a breath. Her eyes filled with tears.
And she understood.
She understood the different inflections in voice. She understood the slightly different mannerisms. She understood the smirks.
Sasuke had been taken.
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It seemed as though her spirit could never die. He had taken her, abused her beauty. Tugged her by the hair when he was displeased, threw her across the floor when she was rebellious.
She was so much like a puppet.
He was a monster.
And she was the beauty in his life.
Because in his darkness, she was the light.
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It was when he began to speak to her more often, becoming fond of her, that she finally placed the irregularities. He came to her often, came to her quarters every day.
He would arrive whenever he pleased, sometimes when she was still asleep. Others while she was tending to her meals. And still, others, when she seemed almost vindictive, punching against the chakra-coated prison walls.
But he would take her by the hand, lacing his long fingers with hers and sit her down on the edge of the bed. And he would tell his plans to her.
Tell her his own dreams, his own aspirations. Tell her his reasons, his aims.
It went on like this for a long while.
She was like a caged bird, so beautiful, and so trapped.
But when he told her his plans, he noticed she changed. Her personality changed. And she began to treat him like he was human.
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When she found out that he wasn't himself, that he was her precious Sasuke, she was lost.
She lost her being.
Her powerful jade eyes dimmed to a hazy olive. And then, slowly but surely, she became utterly dependent.
Because she had nothing else. She had no one else.
She clung to him, demanded his attention. When she disagreed with him, when she occasionally regained her vigor, he squeezed it out of her. And she almost enjoyed it.
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Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered that it had been seven months. And that, strangely enough, she was beginning to like it.
Like everything.
She saw the humanity of it all.
And she believed in him.
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A voice whispered. Stock Holm's syndrome. She drowned it out with her affections.
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He had placed her in a new room. A room filled with elaborate furnishings, with ivory combs and silver handles. A bed made out of wrought iron, a canopy. A dresser with bottles, a carefully crafted mirror.
A closet with fine silks, soft cottons, diaphanous chiffon.
She was his doll, his puppet, his princess.
But when she stared in the mirror for too long, took in her deathly pale skin, fingered the flatness of her hair, she was brought back to a time when her cheeks were flushed with life blood, when her hair would frizz up in the humidity and was silky and thick in the summertime.
When her eyes would smile.
She took a breath in.
And turned away.
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He came to her one night.
And on that night, he had her.
It was never the same after that.
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She remembered all too often, now.
She remembered Naruto and his sunny, sunny smiles. His calloused hands. His deep blue eyes. And Kakashi: his covered smirks, the twinkle in his eyes from laughter.
She remembered happiness.
And then, ever so slowly, she remembered why she had exposed herself to this in the first place.
To save him. To save Sasuke.
But it was too late.
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She was latched onto his arm, her hair pinned up with an ivory and crystal hair comb. Lately, he had taken to calling her his angel.
She supposed she was fallen, though.
She craved for his affection. Her fingers drew patterns on his arm, and she nestled herself into his side.
He was so good to her.
So nice.
So…
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"I love you," she told him one night. His lips pulled back into an eerie smile, and she, somewhat lifeless, now, laughed.
He said nothing in return, though, despite the smile. He seemed to be observing her.
"You treat me so well. I don't deserve…" she drifted off. "I don't deserve you." She paused then, contemplative. "But you're everything I have."
He said nothing, still.
"Don't you love me, too?" she inquired.
And he was silent.
She took that as a yes, even though her mind was screaming no. She smiled, her eyes widening a bit in innocence. She perched on his lap, then, and pressed herself to him, breathing in the dank smell around him.
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The mirror spoke to her.
And so, with a vengeance, she threw the hanger at it.
It shattered.
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Her dreams haunted her.
And in the night, she felt for the poison vial she kept strapped to her thigh at all times. And then, her fingers cascaded over the silver of her hair pins.
A reminder of how far she'd fallen.
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He took her to the morgue.
He showed her the bodies.
Showed her the lives he had taken.
And with light shining in her eyes, she told him that he was an honest man.
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She believed in him.
As unfathomable as it was, she had blinded herself to all his faults and pried apart his actions to reveal false goodness in them.
She was naïve.
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Late at night, she fingered the vial in her pocket.
And she thought and thought and thought.
That night, she didn't get any sleep.
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He thought it odd that she suddenly had a relapse of life.
She bounded out of her room, clad in the clothes she had arrived in a little over a year ago. Her hair was free of its clips and accessories.
She laughed, spun around. She was the wind once again, filled with exuberance.
It was like she was born again.
That night, as she poured them both whiskey to celebrate just because, she uncorked the vial on her person and poured the clear fluid in both of the glasses.
She walked out of the wine cellar, then, and wore on her lips a weary smile.
"I love you," she repeated just like that night. "And so I'm finishing what I started."
And with a smile on her lips, a smile of victory, she threw back the alcohol.
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She drifted.
And she had never felt so alive.
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Orochimaru traced a finger down her jaw and back up around to tuck her hair behind her ear.
He swirled the whiskey in the glass, and looked at it, contemplative. With ease, he tossed the glass against the cement wall and it shattered loudly, liquid sliding down to form a puddle on the floor.
And he lifted her body, wondered how someone could look so vibrant, even in death.
She was so naïve. He took her down the dark steps into the dank morgue where he had taken her earlier that week.
He settled her body on a chair, and ever so carefully, took an ivory comb from his pocket and pulled her hair back, arranging it.
As he settled for arranging her limbs elegantly, he kept himself to his thoughts.
Earlier that week, he had found another ever so vivacious girl. Her name was Hinata, and if Sakura was the wind and the sun, then she, the delicate girl with the bloodline, was the moon. She was the whispers that the branches made when they rustled together, and she was full of love.
And he would have her.
He swept his hand across the pink haired girl's face, her eyes still open and seeing. He never did love her.
But, she was still so lovely.
"Beautiful."
He really was a monster.
afterthoughts: I'm pretty sure this is the hardest thing I've written in my entire life. Or if not the hardest, then at least the top three. I struggled with this a lot. Mostly because of the pairing. I had to immerse myself in fanfiction to write this, and still I didn't know whether I was getting the mood across well, or if I was being near twisted enough as I'd like to be. Or perhaps going overboard. Thankfully, les helped me through that. Anyways, this is for you, Speed. Merry Christmas! I hope you liked your beauty and her beast. (: