Hey, Shinigami-san? Will you kill me?

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you

It's strange what desire will make foolish people do

I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

-x-

The first time she met him, she was three and out of bed when she wasn't supposed to be. Nightmares clung to the tears in her eyes and not even teddy could make it all better. She held it against her as she wandered out into the pitch-black hallway, nerves shaking her little bones. Her parent's door was only feet, but to her, it was a lifetime away. The dark beckoned her, and she squeezed her bear, tracing her hand against the wall as she stepped slowly across the wooden floor. The house was silent, and eerie. She couldn't hear the snoring of her father, and Sakura frowned.

He always snored.

At the door, she turned the handle and pushed it open with a creak. The window in the bedroom was open, and pale moonlight drifted in. The curtains blew in the soft breeze and teddy slipped from her hands. A man as big as the room itself stood over her parents, all black with eyes that glowed red. White teeth shimmered when he smiled.

With a slice, dark red liquid covered the walls of her parent's bedroom and Sakura shook. "M-mama?" Her voice trembled and immediately those red eyes were on her, narrowed and angry. He jumped off the bed, and took long, slow steps towards her. The floors creaked beneath his boots.

Sakura's little legs gave out and she fell to the floor with the man crouching before her. "Contract didn't say anything about a kid," he rumbled, reaching a bloodied hand out to hold her chin. "Lucky for you, I don't have a taste for killing kids." A slow smirk formed. "Especially ones with the Sight."

He tucked that curved weapon behind his back and picked her up in his arms. She stiffened and tears began to stream once more. He started walking, and Sakura's last image was that of her parents laying in an ocean of red before his hand covered her eyes.

"Shh," he hushed her cries, pushing open the door to her bedroom. His boots echoed off the walls and he sat down on her pale-pink bed and laid her down. "Go to sleep."

The blankets were tucked around her shivering body as she stared up at him with wide eyes. He raised an eyebrow. "What? You need a story to sleep?" Her nod must have miniscule because he sighed loudly, settling down onto the floor with his back against the bedframe. "Alright, fine. What's your name?"

"S-Saku…ra."

He nodded. "Once a very long time ago, two people once existed and they loved each other at first sight, but their families hated each other. So, they vowed to run away and live together. The girl was discovered leaving by her father and killed. The boy waited and waited and waited but his beloved never came. He found her body and buried it in a hand-made grave then killed himself, swearing that he would follow her in death as he did in life."

The man turned around to see her frown.

"That's a bad story, mister."

He frowned back, placing his hand over her eyes. "Enough, go to sleep Sakura."

She closed her eyes and heard shuffling of clothing as he got up. His hand brushed over her forehead softly like a whisper. "Sorry," and then he was gone.

-x-

The next time she saw him, she was six and was standing at a red light with her best friend and her foster mom. The puppy in her best friend's arms barked and squirmed until it wiggled its way out and started to chase something in the middle of the street, the little girl with pale blonde hair rushing after it.

"NO!" Her foster mom cried as a truck came barreling around the corner.

There was a loud sound of squishing and then came the screams. Sakura stared at the streak of red that was so much like that night dragged across the road. Her foster mom had left her behind on the sidewalk to pick up the mangled and bent body of her best friend.

The ice cream Sakura had fell to the ground when an elbow bumped against her and she stumbled, heading face first to the ground.

"Hey, pay attention." A man spoke, and she looked up into those glowing red. His head cocked to the side. "Ah, Sakura." He helped her up and patted down her dirty dress, running his hand over the scrap on her arm and it disappeared. He stood and drifted through the gathering crowd like air with that curved weapon raised high. There was a scream that sounded like it came from all sides.

"She's not breathing!" Sakura heard her foster-mom yell, cradling that body in her arms.

The man pulled Sakura off to the side, that red splattered along the arms of his black hoodie. He pushed her to sit on the curb, kneeling in front of her. "You're learning the hard way that life isn't fair." He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear with a softness that surprised her.

Every night for the past three years, he had haunted her dreams and she woke up screaming more times than she liked. He scared her. She could never sleep without a light on, and she hated the color red. She hated the moonlight too. She thought she was safe here, in the daylight with the sun. There were no shadows for him to melt into, no moonlight to highlight the red.

She glanced around but no one was paying attention to her. Why was she the only one that could see him?

He caught her wandering gaze. "The Sight is a curse." He gestured to the others. "They can't see me, but you…" his touch lingered beneath her eyes. "You can."

He left her there, sitting on the curb with tears in her eyes.

"Till next time, Sakura."

Next time?

Next time?

No, she never wanted to see him again.

That man that no one else could see.

Was he Death?

One day, would she see those cruel eyes staring down at her when he swung his scythe against her neck?

-x-

She was cursed. She knew it. When she stopped and paid attention, death was drawn to her like bees to flowers. Was it these eyes? Did they draw Death to those around her? Was it all her fault?

She looked down at the body of one of the older kids in her foster home. There was no inch of skin that wasn't black and blue. Blood dripped slowly from his mouth and nose. That red. She hated that color. Her gaze slid over to the body of her caretaker, a man in his 50s that liked to take care of little girls like Sakura. Sometimes boys, but he loved little girls. His wheezing, dying breath filling the small, dirty room.

Yuki always made sure she was protected. Locking the bedroom door at night and following her everywhere throughout the house so that their foster father would never touch her. He would take beatings to keep her safe. Because Yuki knew, he saw what happened to those tiny little girls that fell into that man's grasp.

Sakura kept running her hand through Yuki's blood-matted hair, apologizing over and over and over. "Those around me die, Yuki-chan."

"The fate of those with the Sight," that man said, leaning against the wall, arms crossed across his chest.

"Death." A statement.

"Shinigami, actually."

She shrugged, her chin motioning to the man. "Here for him?" She asked politely, casually, as if she were discussing the weather.

The Shinigami sauntered over, pressing the sharpened edge against his neck. "Can…. Can I ask a favor, Shinigami-san?"

Glowing eyes locked on her with a raised eyebrow.

"Can you make him suffer?"

He narrowed his eyes, and pressed a hand to the man's forehead, those red eyes glazing over and dimming. The moments stretched and Sakura's hand kept stroking her dead friend's hair. Shinigami pulled back with a sneer and a swear, his boot slamming into her foster father's stomach with a crack.

"Piece of shit," he growled.

Sakura frowned. "Bad language, Shinigami-san."

But he ignored her and pulled out a small capsule from his pocket and slipped it between those bloodied lips and kicked the jaw shut. Soon, her foster father's agonized screams filled the room and Sakura had to cover her ears with her hands.

He picked her up and left the house, the soft swaying of his arms lulling her aching and tired body into drowsiness.

"Shinigami-san…. why do I have the Sight?" She asked sleepily against his chest, as he leapt through the sky, the moonlight drowning them both.

He didn't say anything, but she knew the answer. Because life wasn't fair. So she closed her eyes and felt herself fall sleep for the first time in weeks.

She could have laughed. She felt safer in the arms of a Death Angel than she ever did in a room with her foster father. Even when he put her down and brushed her hair from her face and wiped up her tears, she knew she would see him again.

Because she was nine years old and cursed.

-x-

She didn't see Shinigami for a long time that night. She was placed in yet another foster care home, but the family ignored her for the most part and Sakura found she didn't mind. She woke up, got dressed, went to school, ate, came home, and dreamed of red.

Wash, rinse, repeat for six years.

Strange events continued to happen around her, but she never saw the Shinigami. Her Shinigami.

Time had been kind to her.

She stopped growing somewhere around twelve and began to fill out in her hips and breasts. Her baby fat melted away and left a young girl on the cusp of womanhood surrounded by boys with too many hormones.

But life hadn't been kind to her.

She became pretty and that made her female class-mates angry. They ostracized her, bullied her, wrote slut and whore on her desk when she hadn't even kissed a boy yet. But she couldn't find the will to care. She didn't care when they threw her desk out the window. She didn't care when they ripped up her uniform during gym period. She didn't care when teachers smacked her because the other students said she was a bully and made the girls cry.

She just didn't care.

Because Sakura had lost everything she ever loved. And nothing else mattered.

Not even her own body.

She looked up at her Shinigami pull the man off her. The man who ripped her skirt and held her down, his sticky hot breath against her neck, telling her all the things he would do to her. His large hands loosened from around her neck, and she could breathe.

"Shinigami-san," Sakura croaked, sitting up. The tattered remains of her shirt and bra falling to the sides, blood dripping from the side of her mouth. Her Shinigami picked the man up with one hand, while the other glowed a brilliant purple color as he shoved it through the man's chest, and he screamed.

A tiny part of Sakura was immensely satisfied by the fear and agony in her attempted rapist's eyes.

She opened her mouth to thank him, but his eyes darkened in anger and he stalked over to her, tossing his scythe off to the side with a loud clatter.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He growled into her face.

She cocked her head to the side. "What do you mean?"

"You didn't fight back. Why wouldn't you fight back?!" His roar shook her to her bones, and she shivered at the coldness that drifted off him in waves. His anger was cold, ice cold. Like drifting to the bottom of a black ocean.

"I-… I did. I scratched him, and s-screamed?" Her memory was hazy because he first got her down with a sucker-punch to her face that left her seeing stars.

Her Shinigami glared as he tugged off his zip-up hoodie and wrapped it around her half-naked body. "You didn't fight hard enough." He helped put her arms through the holes and zip it all the way up. He brushed the blood away from her lip with his thumb. "You're still alive, Sakura. You still have so much life before you. Don't stop fighting."

Sakura sighed, nestling in deeper to the warm hoodie. The arms were way too long for her, and went past the tips of her fingers, but she curled up into it. The strong scent of teakwood and fire filled her lungs. 'Ah, so that's what he smells like.' She fell back onto the pile of gym mats, arms spread out. "Didn't you say it yourself, Shinigami-san? That life isn't fair? Death comes for us all." She turned a dead green gaze to him. "How do you know the next contract you get won't be my name at the top?"

"I didn't save your fucking life all those years ago for you to throw it away now." His fist connected with the wall and it crumbled. She sat up, her memories of that first night a bit blurry.

"Didn't you say that… I wasn't in the death contract on my parents?" She held a hand to her throbbing head.

He grabbed a bottle of water from the shelves that lined the storage room and shoved it into her hands, glaring at her for her to drink. "I also said I don't have a taste for killing kids." He hovered over her, watching her drink until the bottle was empty.

Sakura slipped off the mats onto the ground with shaky legs and stepped closer to him. "But what about when I was six? My best friend was killed by that truck." Her hand curled around his forearm that was tattooed with black designs she couldn't understand. The t-shirt he wore was fitted to his body, her head only reached the top of his chest.

He pulled roughly away from her and stepped back. "Sometimes there are contracts I can't disobey. Your friend would have grown up to have a mental breakdown when she found her husband screwing with her best friend. She would murder them both in a passion murder that would include four of her children and an unborn one." Shinigami pulled a pack of smokes from his pocket and lit one up, inhaling deep and physically relaxed and turned a bright red eye on her again. "Don't tell anyone I told you that story. It was confidential."

Sakura paused and then laughed. Laughed for the first time in months, and gods did she feel light. Tears stung at the corner of her eyes and she leaned against the wall beside him. "You never did tell very good stories, Shinigami-san."

He ran a hair through his black hair, pushing it away from his face, the glow of the cigarette highlighting his beautiful and cruel features. Her hand reached out to trace her finger down the side of his face.

"Don't." He said, taking yet another step back and crushing the cigarette beneath his foot. Picking up his scythe, he ripped the door open, standing in the sunlight. "Don't stop fighting, Sakura."

Then he was gone, and she was left with a black hoodie and more nightmares.

-x-

Sakura Haruno celebrated her twentieth birthday alone in a shitty apartment in the red-light district. It was the only flat she could afford with the disgusting excuse for wages she received from the bar she worked at. She was eighteen when her foster family kicked her out of the home, saying she was old enough to work and support herself. It would be one less mouth for them to feed. So, she went without a fuss and lived in a half-way home until she saved up enough money to start renting.

The lights of the district nearly outshone the full moon outside her window. That hoodie was still too big on her, but she wore it anyways, comforted in the scent that seemed to linger in the fibers. She sat with her head in her hands, staring at that moon.

"Hey, Shinigami-san. My wish this year is that you will be the one to accept the contract on my life," her eyes fluttered close, drowning out the painful ache between her legs. "You took my death from me that night and made me live this miserable life." She laid her head down on the table, tears dripping from her eyes. "This is hardly a life worth living. I live in this shit-hole that costs too much, work in a bar that keeps my tips, fuck men just to pay my bills…. Shinigami-san, why do you hate me so much?"

"I don't hate you," he said, sitting on the railing of her balcony, scythe glimmering in the moonlight. He was dressed in that faded black t-shirt and his hair was away from his face like he had ran his hand through it too many times and it just stuck. "I thought I was saving you."

She laughed, bitter and cruel, and too old for her years. "Save me from the sweet embrace of death?" She got up to lean against the sliding door. "I was supposed to die when I was six because that truck was meant for both me and my friend. And again, when I was nine, that old man was supposed to kill me instead of Yuki. And that night in the storage room, my teacher was going to strangle me to death, right?"

Her Shinigami, her poor, tired, lost looking Shinigami sighed, running a hand through his hair and it stuck up even more, his head hung. "Yeah. All those were contracts put out on you."

Her fist collided with his chest, but he didn't even flinch. She hit him over and over and over again until her hands hurt, and she couldn't breathe because she was crying so hard. He took her hands in his, pulling her against his chest and held her so tight, tighter than anyone ever had before. "Why would you take that from me?!" She sobbed.

Another sigh. "I have a story for you." He adjusted his hold on her body until she was wrapped up in his arms, the hood of his sweater pulled tight against her eyes so she couldn't see a thing. His voice rumbled in his chest all through her bones.

"Once upon a time, a boy and a girl fell in love. Their families despised each other and kept them apart. The couple vowed to run away and get married and be together until they died. But the girl's father found out that she was planning to run away, and he killed her, cursing her soul to live unhappily until the end of time. The boy found her body and built a grave for her, the finest grave anyone had ever seen and laid her to rest. Then he lay down on top of her tomb and waited for death.

When death came, he couldn't find peace without his beloved. His soul continued to wander the earth, searching for her. God took pity on the boy and turned him into an angel to do his bidding. So, he served under God for a long time, accepting contracts as they were given. Until one contract he was in a bedroom, releasing two doctors that killed their patients without permission when a little girl wandered into the room.

Her eyes were so green, and so bright, they saw right into his soul. And he recognized those eyes. The eyes that echoed the soul of his beloved. He had found her again. The contract called for her death, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not for that contract, or the hundreds of others that came after that had her name on it."

Her Shinigami set her down on the ground, holding the hood across her eyes. "Instead, the Shinigami adjusted the world around her so that he could continue to watch her grow and breathe. Even if she cried and experienced a painful life. He was happy that she was alive."

His hands drifted off her body and she felt so cold. "Shinigami-san?" She whispered, pulling the hood off her head. He was gone and she was standing on the road in front of her crumbling and burning apartment, the screams of the residents filling her soul.

Later the news would tell her that the faulty wiring in the building cause the gas lines to explode, killing every single resident.

Except her.

"That's a bad story, Shinigami-san."

-x-

She was twenty-three when she sat on the railing of the bridge, rushing water roaring 1000 feet below her, and the warm sunlight soaking her. She had one hand holding onto the pillar because the railing was so tiny for her to sit on. Her pale pink hair blew around her in the soft breeze and she closed her eyes. She knew the moment he arrived. It was a change in the air, like electricity and fire. It called to her soul.

"Sakura," her Shinigami's voice cracked in pain and sorrow. She turned around carefully to see him standing there with tears in his eyes, one hand mid-reach for her.

She smiled at him, radiate and full of adoration. "I'm tired, Sasuke."

His gaze snapped up to her, his mouth slightly open and oh his eyes, so much pain, so much regret. "Sakura, you-…."

"I remember, Sasuke. It all came back last night." Flashes of those red eyes gazing at her throughout hundreds of lifetimes, whispering her name. "You've been there for every one of my reincarnations, haven't you Sasuke? Protecting me?"

He gritted his teeth. "Then don't leave me now. The one thing He doesn't forgive is suicide. I don't know what will happen to you." He took another step forward. "Don't go where I can't find you."

Sakura reached out to caress his face, brushing away his tears much like he had done so many times to her. Then she leaned down and pressed her lips to his in the most bittersweet kiss she ever had. Her hands tangled in his hair and his hands were on her thighs, and her name on his lips, whispering and pleading and begging in a way she had never seen a man do before.

"I hope that when I die, we can find each other again." She whispered against his burning lips and pushed him away. He stumbled and she opened her arms wide into free-fall off the bridge.

Thank you for watching over me.

The last thing she felt before she hit the water was Sasuke's arms wrapped her up against his body, saying he wouldn't let her go alone.

-x-

Hey, Shinigami-san? Why are you crying?

What a wicked game to play

To make me feel this way

What a wicked thing to do

To let me dream of you