The Barn

Chapter Ten

Orbit

Sakura closed her eyes again and tried to remember, but couldn't. There was something at the edge of her thoughts, something she had been thinking before Kakuzu found her and picked her up, but she had passed out right after than and the thought was lost in the fog behind her brain.

Sakura swallowed and winced at the feel. Her throat was still bruised and would likely take a few more hours to heal. She was lucky it was the weekend and she didn't have students to see her look like the poster child for abused women needing donations.

"You up for a glass of water this time?" Kakuzu asked, scooting closer to her side with a glass already in his hands.

Sakura blinked and then turned in bed, only to wince at the feel of her side and the ache between her ribs. It had been a long time since she last had to heal rapidly, and her body was a little out of practice. They said the more Uzumaki healed, the faster the process became. There was also some study in the cells during regeneration that linked it to the long lifespans her family was famous for.

Sakura pat the side of her face and felt the bandages. Her lip was split in the marring, as well as a huge chunk of her cheek. Even after it healed, Sakura knew there would be discoloration for a few more days that she would need to hide with make up. Anywhere else and she wouldn't have bothered, but her face was important.

"He scarred my face."

"It will heal, and you're still plenty beautiful."

Sakura took the glass of water extended to her and glared balefully over its rim at the man seated on her bed. "Flattery will get you nowhere."

"You forget who you're talking to. Facial scarring and pity are my speciality." He pulled down the scarf in front of his face and showed off the scars (no longer hidden with magic) that stretched from lip end to cheek ridge. "And that wasn't flattery, just conversation built around facts."

She spared her surroundings an afterthought of a cursory glance and found the room tasteful with minimal decorations and clear functionality. The walls were a faded mint, which might have been odd for a man, but she liked it. There were small, potted succulents on the windowsill and extry fuzzy gray blankets folded over the arm of a sitting chair in the corner, begging to be touched. The desk in the corner looked unused and pristine leading her to assume she was in some sort of guest room. Under any other circumstances she probably would have liked the room, but the circumstances still hurt.

Sakura closed her eyes and for a moment she wanted to believe it was the world going dim and turning off, and not just her sight. No matter how much she wished it, the world would go on turning and the sun wouldn't change for her.

"I wanna say I had him on the ropes, but I didn't even get close, did I?"

"You're too out of practice and Karin made you cocky." Sakura opened her eyes to glare but Kakuzu just shrugged. "She did. She's out of practice too. That's what happens when you fall out of favor and let yourself go. She might have been dangerous if she wasn't such a self pitying layabout."

Sakura's glare turned sharper. "They were abusing her."

"They were using her blood to boost their own magic stores. It's what kept her in such high favor after Mito passed."

Sakura let her eyes shut once more, and this time it was because the effort to keep them open drained her too much; they were weighted curtains over her eyes. With her eyes closed it was almost too easy to paint a picture of how things changed with Kushina taking over Mito's role and cementing a nomination for her boys…Naruto in particular. At least Mito was fair about nominations of the dames and dons. Kushina didn't seem to play that sort of game when it came to Karin or other contenders. That explained why Karin was such a mess.

"Things changed a lot after Mito passed, I take it," Sakura guessed.

"Every new regime of power brings change."

Sakura didn't bother opening her eyes, but she did turn her face towards Kakuzu and give him as much direct attention as she could.

"I didn't know that the family qualified as a regime of power. That's a little scary."

"You were never that stupid."

She couldn't stop her lip from quirking, wanting to grin, but hating how it ached when the skin stretched. "Someone believed I was, otherwise I wouldn't have been let go as easily as I was."

"What makes you think they let go of you."

Sakura thought back and remembered what Kakuzu had told her about being watched. Her credit cards and virtual footprint were all likely their gossip of the hour every odd weekend, but that was it.

The thoughts made her want to look away and focus on something else, like the foxglove flowers in the vase by the door or the pastel watercolor landscapes hanging on the wall. The paintings were all originals and well crafted pieces, likely costing the penny pincher something substantial.

"There was a tail on my house, and then one on my dorm, and a plan in half my classes for the first year. By the time I was a junior they fell away. When I graduated they showed up once for that party, but didn't follow me into graduate school. It was then that I considered myself free."

"They let you slip away, but they still had a hand on your leash; it was just slack so you couldn't feel it."

"Lovely."

Sakura thought there would be more anger, like when she told Kakuzu off the last time he stopped by her office, but the anger was dull and far behind the stinging pain that was so greedy for more and more of her attention.

"What else are you going to tell me, O personal savior?"

Sakura asked mockingly as she forced her eyes to open and her lashes to flutter in his direction. She was able to see his reaction but still couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling. It had always been hard to tell with Kakuzu. Every gaze that wasn't through tinted shades felt intense.

"What are you thinking now?" she heard herself whisper before she knew what she was saying.

She saw him blink and pull back slightly before making up the distance as he braced with one hand on the edge of the bed and moved in.

"I was honest when I told you this was a safe place. I want you to know what you would be getting into if you didn't have my help, but I don't want to see you hurt again."

"Cute," Sakura cooed, eyebrows arched in disbelief. "You're a real romeo."

He almost recoiled at the words. "I never claimed to be. I was being serious when I said you would need help. Don't you see that?"

She rolled her eyes. "I have what I wanted and I didn't want anything more, so the need for protection has passed. It hurt and it was a little tricky, but I think it's going to be fine if I don't cross paths with the main house after this."

"That's not possible."

"I'm not a witch anymore," Sakura laughed. "I don't use my magic. The past few weeks have been a fluke. Once I figure something out with the others this will be over and things will go back to how they used to be."

"How naive."

Sakura's smile strained. "Ever hear the term 'self fulfilling prophesies?' If I believe in something strongly enough I can sway my fate, sometimes not a lot, sometimes just enough. If I believe it, maybe I can make it happen."

"You don't and you won't."

"You think you know me pretty well, but you don't really." Sakura curled her lip even though it hurt and closed her eyes again. "It will be fine after it's hard for a while."

Kakuzu huffed in agitation, leaning back far enough to cross his arms. "What of the Sound of Heaven coven? You think they would leave such low hanging fruit alone?"

Sakura's mind came up blank. "What?"

"Oh, you didn't know about the antagonistic rival coven growing up along the fairy roads? That's a variable you didn't factor in, am I correct?" He straightened and tilted his chin back into his scarf. "The lands around here are too rich to not be envied by lesser covens. Did they not tell you that in your little witch classes?"

"There aren't enough witches alive to make a coven strong enough to threaten Mito's legacy," Sakura huffed. "And it has nothing to do with me."

"They recruited Tayuya last month, after she failed to inherit the Barn and was all but cast out by Kushina Uzumaki. When she came to visit you it wasn't to get back into their good graces, but to let her new Patriarch know."

Sakura reached out with her hands to find the surface of her bed and brace against it. "So?" Her voice was a mask of indifference woven in tone.

"Karin defected last night. Kushina wasn't happy with her loss of Madara to you and it came to blows." Kakuzu looked away.

"That wouldn't be enough to throw someone like Karin out of the coven. She's blood."

"Correction. She's a blood witch, and more importantly not one of her sons. Kushina doesn't care who she excommunicates anymore and the coven is on the path to ruin or war. Either way, it's not going to be so easy to stay out of the crosshairs and that might be the real reason Naruto gave up the cards to you. Even if his mother is crazy, he's manipulative enough to know a potential ally when he sees it."

She couldn't help but make a face. "Oh, wow, I didn't know that was what he looks like when he's trying to make friends." She touched the scar on her mouth.

"Believe me, that was not the worst he can do. Besides, he wanted an ally, not a friend. There is a difference. To Naruto, all he needs is his brother and the whole world can turn it's back on him and he would still be fine. I think it's the same way with Menma, but not because he has a choice. Naruto is the sun and everybody else are just planets, caught in the pull of his massive gravity."

"Jupiter isn't."

"What was that?" Kakuzu asked.

Sakura's voice went dreamy and her eyes roved behind her eyelids as if she were reading something in the darkness of her mind. Her photographic memory bleed the scene into perfect clarity.

"Jupiter does not orbit the sun. With 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined, it's big enough that the center of gravity between Jupiter and the sun doesn't actually reside inside the sun — rather, at a point in space just above the sun's surface." She opened her eyes once more and faced Kakuzu. "If he's the sun I'll be Jupiter."

He chuckled, taking her water glass and looking into it. "I don't think you would be anything so mundane. You'd be something outside of our reach, a distant star burning beyond the spill of our Milky Way, unassumingly small in the distance, but no less menacing once reached. Naruto's lucky you're giving up."

He set the water glass down on the table and braced his hands on his knees before standing.

"The others." She reached out for him, grabbing the fabric of his neatly pressed trousers and clinging."They don't know where this place is, do they? Are they safe?"

He paused, scarf slipping as he stared down at her, mouth slightly parted. She saw him swallow before answering. He didn't pull away. "They're safe, back at the barn. I sent them there."

"How?"

He almost moved closer to her, but she might have just imagined that. He was towering and tall as he loomed over the bed she lay in.

"I…" his breath interrupted his speech and she could hear how before he swallowed and tried again. "I am not so useless to not have my own set of tricks. You forget I am proficient in magical arts after having lived in this land for nearly seventy years."

Sakura's fingers slipped and fell away from the fabric as she chuckled. "You're an old geezer."

By his tone she could tell he took offence at that. "I age only outside of a binding. I'm not really that old."

"Old," Sakura sang, turning her face away, back into the pillows.

She started to melt into sleep and Kakuzu watched her all the way down until she was dozing with soft sounds on his pillows. He could smell her magic burning where she bled, knitting skin and tissue back like threads in silk. His sheets would smell like she slept in them for days. He wouldn't complain about that. He also probably wouldn't wash them until the smell faded.

He was almost too distracted to notice the sulfur in his living room and the burning of dimension shifting.

"I though it required too much magic to activate the space–time ninjutsu of your Sharingan," Kakuzu said as he shut the door behind him.

"You're one to speak. What did it take to activate those tags and sweep so many people off their feet to not one, but two different locations?" Madara leaned back, crossing his arms across his chest. "And you know I have plenty of chakra to burn."

"You'll run out before you know it, and she won't bail you out. She's not the type to make snap judgments under pressure, so she's not going to make you her familiar if you start to fade."

Madara made a mocking face. "Oh, you know her so well. Pervert stalker."

"My intentions are no less honorable than yours."

"Who said mine were honorable?" Madara asked.

"Naturally," Kakuzu sighed, sounding exhausted with the Uchiha. "That comes as no surprise, but this time I'll have to insist that you not pursue her. You're out of depth in this strange new world."

"And you're not?"

Kakuzu didn't hide any of his face as he glared openly at Madara. "Survive nearly a century on the marrow of a matriarch's magic and try saying that again. You're not suitable for this world the way you are now. You're reckless and believe you're the king again."

Madara leaned forward, his eyes widening as glowing red pinwheels bleed across his pupils, turning viciously like blades. They thrummed with magic older and heavier than the bones of the earth. "I think you've forgotten who I am or what I've done in the world we once shared. I am Madara Uchiha, a god of dreams and nightmares, destroyer of nations."

"That was another time and another world. You're not that person anymore, for better or worse. Others pulled out of the void didn't even remember the war at the end, and even I lost that recollection until my bond with Mito solidified a month after my initial summoning. The ones that came through before me didn't recall half as much with twice as much time."

"Others?"

Madara glared, lifting his chin as a sly smile stretched across Kakuzu's face, tugging at his stitches.

"Yes, there are others."

"You tell that to Sakura, or are you withholding that too until she consents to play mother to your self gratification fantasies?" Madara closed his eyes and the red in them faded but didn't disappear completely. "It doesn't sound like she's dying to talk with you again. Besides, she enjoys my company enough during those midnight hours."

Kakuzu simmered but kept the expression from reaching his face. Instead, he schooled his expression into the stone set used for court rooms and business meetings. He was a professional that knew how to deal with the disorderly and unkind.

"Mock all you like. You understand nothing." Kakuzu pointed to the seal still burning his carpet. "I'll send you back or you can return on your own, but you don't get to stay here."

"You're crazy if you think I'm leaving her here with you," Madara growled, staring up at the taller male through his bangs and long, Uchiha black lashes. "You're not going to move me."

"I'll insist."

There was knowing in his eyes as Madara directed the fulness of his intention to Kakuzu. There were things said between them without words. The barest hint of magic flavored with age singed the edges of their senses.

"I'd like to see you try. I'll make a scene and she'll wake up and she'll see what you're trying to do. You had that room made up for her like you were expecting her to move in with you. It's creepy enough, even for you."

"I'm trying to protect her from forces and influences you aren't even aware of yet. She's a Uzumaki by blood and that means it's dangerous for her to be unguarded right now. Her cousins were already recruited. If Kushina keeps weakening her coven, it'll collapse under the weight of all her discarded tools." For a moment Kakuzu was distracted as he thought about his words. "He'll go after her next, even though he already has a bone witch."

"Who will?" Madara snapped.

Kakuzu looked up and grinned. "No one you need concern yourself with. It's a matter of covens and you're only good for business among clans. If you don't want to leave on your own that's fine. I told Sakura she would be safe here and I was true to my word. Even though you could slip in here with a bit of space and time folding magic, that's nothing my dominion spells can't manage."

The word was odd to hear and Madara ruffled at the sound of it. "Dominion?"

"This is my dominion, this quaint little apartment room with a view overlooking the lake Sakura can wake up to. I've blessed and purified it a hundred times over before Mito died, and my magic is still thick in its walls." He lifted his hand and put his palm flat atop the surface. "Like here."

There was a thrum of energy and Madara felt the magic pull behind his navel in a sick way that was all too familiar. His red eyes flashed too slowly as the spell rooted in him and sent him hurling through the path he burned when he first warped through space and time.

Madara snarled as best he could against the pull, but when he blinked, he was back in the Barn, looking at a pair of irritated and confused faces. He didn't wait for them to ask before he grabbed the back of a chair and roared, throwing it at Gaara who caught it easily and held onto it, watching the Uchiha scream his curses.

"Next time we see him I'll gut the bastard."

"I take it Sakura's not coming back tonight," Konan sighed, staring behind her at the bed in disappointment. It was still messy and unmade.

Gaara huffed, setting the chair down. "I'm going to read in my loft. Call me when something exciting happens."

Madara screamed again, wasting flares of magic.

AN:

Here is something from tumblr that I thought would be beneficial to bring over. Someone on anon asked: If familiars need a witch in order for them to survive arent they just playin hopscotch basically? Hopping from witch to witch to stay alive? Don't they wana move on? Or are they trying to find someone that will have them an is immortal?

My answer:So familiars are usually like summons in the Naruto world, animals or creatures you make contracts with to keep in the material world as a companion. Other variations allowed you to summon multiple animals from a family or race of creatures, those are the most common and accepted forms of witch-familiar contracts.

It gets messy when the people are human-or used to be at least, because that school of magic is strictly a form of necromancy (much frowned upon in the Witchy World). There are levels to the bond they establish with a witch which determine their fate after the witch's death.

Madara and the others were consumed by great power in the end and their bodies were destroyed, but because of the nature of the accident at the end of the world, their souls were tethered to that 'spell' or jutsu and unable to move on. They were little better than ghosts. This sort of event is really rare. When this happens it's little better than being damed because of how difficult it is to subvert the curse that killed them all in the first place. There are a few things a witch can do if s/he is able to pull these souls out of the items they were tethered to (original wood from the accident for Madara and company.)

1. Salutation
Sakura could initiate the most basic bonding contract and tie a silver thread of fate from her heart to theirs. It's what Mito did with Kakuzu and that required a living person as a sacrifice to form the body Kakuzu would use. This is a lot like the Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation which binds the soul of a deceased person (Kakuzu) to a living vessel. Because they get a body out of this, they can survive after their witch dies, but not for long. That silver thread of fate is unrolling and once it's unrolled they're back in the curse again.

2. Communion
Sakura could initiate something called Communion, which is the next level up and a bit more sexy costly to the witch. In addition to needing a body sacrifice, they tie a gold string of fate to the summon that binds them to their witch, but upon death that bond isn't guaranteed to stick-it can still break and doesn't ensure them escaping the curse completely. They get a chance to pass on, or they could end up like Kakuzu, decaying slowly until they slip back into the curse.

3. Engagement
Sakura only knows vaguely about this one because it's so rare. (If you're willing to do an Engagement you can do a Matrimony.) Basically a platinum thread of fate ties the summon to the witch and binds them both in death-so they would die when their witch dies. They still need a body for this. The cost for this ceremony is high because it allows a witch to take on multiple familiars. Death is possible for the caster at this ritual level. If the familiar dies after this bond is forged, they pass on. They are officially free from the curse.

4. Matrimony
It can only be done between one witch and a summon at a time and when one dies so does the other. It does require a body sacrifice, but it ties a red string of fate between the two and it's not so dangerous to the witch. This is a highly emotional bond though, so it doesn't always work between any witch and any summon, but if both parties are willing it should work. The summon is more powerful at this stage than any other. Also, if either dies, so doe the other.

Sakura doesn't know about the last two very well, but that's the basic leveling of how to deal with summons if you don't have a contract for them.

Now yeah, if all they could get are basic silver bonds, familiars will witch-bounce to stay alive, but what they're really craving is something more. Red threads are a magical high most could only dream about, but most would be happy with a gold thread that gives them the chance to break free at the end and pass on. No one wants to go back to being a ghost. They all want to eventually move on, but some (coughMadaracough) would like more while they are in the living world.