Crystallize

Regrets collect like old friends
here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
All of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh

Somewhere just outside the hinges of your imagination, there's a land made entirely of ice and snow. Sakura is there in an impenetrable frost cage whiter, harder, more forever than bone. The people of this ice kingdom have built a monument to shame and worthless sorrow. Sakura is the monument. She grabs the cage bars to shake her way out of it, but her fingers freeze and stick to the harsh whiteness. Her palms turn into snow. She tries to scream and beg out her freedom, but the words raindrop out of her mouth and freeze in midair. The ice kingdom people all stand around the cage and watch her. They have features she recognizes, each of their faces was her own at one point in time. Malice, Fear, Naivete. They are all there, have all come back to claim their piece of her. They lick their lips. They reach out and touch her frozen words, breaking them with the slightest tap. Sakura watches her words glinting in so many blindingly white shards on the white ground. Sometimes the ugliest things are the most beautiful. She manages to cry, and the tears crystallize on her cheeks.

Sakura comes up out of the dream like a baptized sinner being pulled from the depths of the water. The sharp, cold of the dream still washes over her. Disoriented, as if moving in slow motion, she blinks her eyes, struggling to adjust to the room brimming over with thin, yellow light. Sasuke stands at the headboard grinning down on her. His dark eyes scream possessive commands, though he doesn't speak. He never does. Sakura shoves him away. Her hand gets caught in his belly. An electric chill strikes her wrist, grows, crawling up her skin.

Last night? The snow? Kakashi?

The sheets? The Rin girl? Those words?

Was it all a dream? Just another one of the open doors in her chamber of fantasies? Or had it really happened? The room looks exactly as it should. No sign that a person other than Sakura had come in and ripped her clothing aside and knotted up her bedcovers in a frantic attempt to melt into her. The bedcovers. Lying on the floor in a tight coil like a sleeping serpent. But Sakura is a wild sleeper. She could have easily…he isn't here. He never had been. Had he? She looks at Sasuke. He is silent.

Sakura got up and went into the kitchen, Sasuke following close enough to nip her heels . She almost runs into Kakashi jumping into his pants, his face pointing like an arrow towards her front door.

"You." She says and immediately feels stupid.

You. As opposed to who? Another figment of her imagination? Had she expected to see this Rin girl after so much talk of her? Really, she was only trying to adjust. Trying to figure out what to do in a situation like this. What to do when you became the kind of person involved in a situation like this.

Kakashi's weary smile stretches out across his face like a tired cat. Rubbing his hands through his hair he looks older than he did through last night's film of want and sweat soaked desperation. The hollows under his eyes are bomb shelters. She hadn't quite noticed the hollows were so deep with the lights out.

"Ok, you caught me. It is I, Kakashi Hatake. Now that you've discovered me, I guess you're going to kill me?"

He is teasing her. Pulling his mask on over his face and already inching towards the door. Giving her that stupid crescent eyed smile, belittling her. He thought she was a child. Or another number in his address book of bodies he'd entered like houses with open doors. Which is worse? He is going to disappear into the doorway if she doesn't…

"Really…Kakashi..um…sensei. Stay and have some…" she had swallowed some of the awkwardness and was floundering in it. Kakashi raised an eyebrow, Sakura gesturing madly towards the kitchen cabinets, the slippery words evading her.

"Stay and have some…" still gesturing, going red in the face.

"Kitchen?"

"Tea, Kakashi-sensei. Tea."

"Even better."

Sakura turns so he won't see the look on her face. He unnerves her and she doesn't like it. Something is different about him. Now that she has seen that there is a person beneath the flak vest, she isn't entirely sure she likes him. May'be it would have just been better to let him leave. Tea. Tea was stupid. Tea wouldn't knead the atmosphere's tense shoulders. The tension in the air was a thick smoke, and Sakura could barely breathe. She busies herself making the stupid tea.

Sasuke is leaning against the counters staring slashing daggers at Kakashi. She wonders how it's possible that the older man does not feel those shooting bullet eyes piercing his face, blowing the fine bones apart. Instead Kakashi is looking at her. Staring straight at her. Even with her head bowed, she could feel those eyes, dark and unnerving. Sakura lifted her head and glared at him, angry although she didn't know why.

"What?" she snapped.

"May'be I…had better be going after all…"

Sakura slid a steaming cup in his direction. "Afraid you'll have to talk about last night?"

"Has anyone ever told you that your tea making skills are A+? Because your tea making skills are A+."

He wasn't even listening to her. Sakura tilted her own mug up to her face and took a long thirsty drink. Something strange was happening to her. From the moment she had opened her eyes she had felt a foreign new-ness shifting, like an alien life force in her belly. She felt as if Kakashi was still touching her, still sucking the breath from her heated body. Something moving in her gut. May'be if she drank enough scalding tea, she could drown it out.

Kakashi looked concerned, the first expression she could clearly recall seeing on his face.

"Isn't that hot?" he asks.

"No." inside of her mouth is a lit match.

She wants to turn around and see what Sasuke is doing, but she doesn't want Kakashi-sensei getting suspicious. What would he think if he knew that she was carrying around this suitcase full of scars? What if Sasuke is really there and it isn't just her tortured imagination. What if Kakashi see him, the slightest outline of sin leaning against the kitchen counter. What if their eyes meet?

Sakura takes another deep swallow of tea. Her guts are still sloshing.

"About last night, Sakura-chan…."

She struggles to swallow back her surprise, choking, manages to sputter out "Don't mention it." the tea coming back up her throat.

"No…I…the things I said…."

"You were talking out of your head. I knew that. I know that. I maybe be a little girl, but I'm not stupid. You were really drunk."

"That doesn't mean I didn't mean it."

She feels as if he just slapped her face with a hot iron. "…Well, did you?"

A tired laugh, a laugh grasping at straws that aren't there. "I don't know, that would depend on what I said."

"You don't remember?"

He shrugs.

You said I love you, she thinks. You looked me right in the eyes and said I love you. And I felt that you were talking to me, even if you weren't. You weren't…were you? Still it felt as if…

"Nothing. It was nothing Kakashi-sensei. I don't remember what you said either."

He's looking at her in an odd way. His eyes are hands peeling back her skin. Now, she knows every part of him. Every inch and river and city of his body mapped out on the thinly veined backs of her eyelids. Who is Rin? She wants to ask. Who are these people living inside of you? In your head? You become transparent when you drink. The shadows of all the prisoners you're keeping caged in your heart press their hands against your breastbone. I could see them fighting to get out.

"Can I get you any breakfast?" is what comes out of her mouth.

"I shouldn't have come here in the first place."

"No, don't go." She says too quickly, before she can dissuade it from coming out. "It's no trouble for me to whip you up something to eat." She says then quickly, to cover up the wound she's opened. She's desperate for him to stay. In her kitchen looking at her as if he can see parts of her she didn't know existed. She's desperate to have someone look at her like that. They way Sasuke never did…

She was already at the refrigerator, her hands scrabbling through the meager contents. The things she had chosen to make up her life. "Let's see I've got eggs and bacon…and cheese. I could…do an omelet?"

The silence was shifting around her.

"Kakashi?" she turned and he was gone. She hadn't even heard him shut the door. The tea cup sat still steaming on the kitchen counter, the one thing he had touched besides her. Somehow that made it more monumental. The only proof that briefly someone had been there, someone had wanted her.

Sakura swore under her breath, slamming her hands against the counter. The plaster whined in protest and cracked in half. She grabbed up the tea cup and threw it through the wall. Plaster and ceramic shrapnel, warm, brown liquid bleeding down the wallpaper. The neighbors would ask about her. Put their nosy moon faces to the hole in the wall and wonder if she needed help. Angry tears sprang to her eyes and she hated herself for crying and she hated herself for hating herself, and she didn't even know why she had wanted, needed him, so desperately, to stay.

"I'm so stupid!" she was screaming, the words dissolving into useless tears. So stupid. When would she learn? It was all her fault after all. She had been the one to take advantage of him inebriated, blinking phosphenes out of his eyes. She had been the one wanting to feel. She was stupid. So so so stupid. Why hadn't she learned?

Sasuke came up behind her. She had almost forgotten he was there. His arms around her waist strong as ropes, cold as ice, he dug his chin into her shoulder. She could breathe him in and forget. Let the past come back to her, his blue icy breath on her neck. She closed her eyes lulled by the familiar. Soon, she'd be summoned to Lady Tsunade's office, and the older woman would remark bewilderingly how the hairs on the young girl's slender neck were frozen solid.