chapter ten: aquamarine
They'll talk about us,
All the lovers
How we kiss
And kill each other.
.
.
.
Tenshi had always believed the concept of silence to be very strange.
As a child, her mother had filled their home with music; dancing and singing while gardening and cooking until Hyūga Hiashi's visit had tilted her universe off course. In their shack in the baking sun, the waves of the ocean consistently broke against the shore, and the watery melody soothed her aching heart, even on the worst of nights. In the Snake Room, the dynamic of sound had significantly altered, but was never any less quiet. It was unique in the same manner as the comforting nostalgia of her childhood home and the bittersweet lull of the beach, except Orochimaru had been fond of the sound of despair.
There was screaming and crying. Beer cans were crushed and liquor bottles were smashed. Clothes ripped and hair ripped and dogs barked and men laughed while girls wept. Shoes got shuffled and doors got slammed. The Snake Room had been a bustling little town, Orochimaru self-elected mayor, and it did not sleep. The Vanilla Villa was very similar, only Tsunade had been fond of the sound of money. Her desire for riches had diluted any idea that her girls work miserable, as their happiness was integral for the success of the Villa. As a result, there was often giggling and wine glasses tinkling and conversation over coffee after an eventful shift.
There was never not chaos. There was never not noise.
But in Naruto's guestroom that day, as Tenshi sunk to the floor against the wall, she could eerily identify the subtle beat of her own heart. Its fast, steady rhythm echoed throughout her entire body, pounding against her eardrums until she thought she would go deaf in the silence.
It was just too quiet. It was too quiet. It was too quiet. It was too—
"How did he die?"
She blinked.
Naruto's voice cut through the dense air and suddenly everything returned to normal.
Normal.
They were anything but.
He cleared his throat. "The baby. How did he die?"
From her position on the floor, Tenshi looked up at him. He was standing against the opposite wall, arms crossed tightly over his chest. In his eyes, she saw the reflection of her shame. She saw herself, eighteen and in love. Eighteen and pregnant. Eighteen and a prostitute. She saw herself in pools of ocean blue, and she terribly wanted him to understand.
"I was…foolish," she started. "I should've known better…than to get pregnant."
Naruto's eyes squeezed shut. "Don't ever say that. I'm sure it wasn't your fault."
"But it was," she said quickly, sniffling. She stood to her feet, hoping her legs could still recall how to support her weight. She pressed herself to the wall, her hands going damp with sweat as she placed her palms against either side of her face. "He was awful, and I knew that. I knew that he ever found out…he would hurt me." He would hurt us.
"Who?" Naruto asked, taking two steps forward. "Sasuke?"
"No," Tenshi gasped. Tears spilled over her cheeks.
The memory of her pain was still there, still so fresh that she feared placing her hands against her privates would result in her fingers being soaked crimson with her dead baby's blood.
"Then who?" Naruto pressed. He continued to walk forward, inching closer until they were an arm's length apart.
He watched as her mouth gave a subtle twitch and realized that he, perhaps, would never truly know who Tenshi was.
"A bad man," was all she said. Despite the melancholy surging through her body and bones, her eyes still held a formidable fierceness. When they looked at him, they told him she was done talking about the child.
But he had to know.
"Do you still love him? Sasuke?"
"No," she said honestly. "Do you…still love Sakura?"
"No."
"Why did you break up with her?"
"I didn't."
"Then what happened?"
"She was in love with Sasuke." She's still in love with Sasuke.
"Oh…"
More silence.
"I'm so sorry, Naruto," Tenshi said.
"Me, too."
He did not expect for her thin arms to wrap securely around his frame, but when they did, he embraced her with equal fervor. Perhaps that was what each of them needed after such a wearing confrontation: a simple hug.
She untangled herself from his arms a few seconds after the contact, pressing her hand against the center of his chest where his hurried heart betrayed his steady gaze. She walked towards the shredded photo of Gaara and carefully picked up each piece, dumping the contents into the fold of her T-shirt. She purposely did not make eye contact with Naruto as she slid passed him and out the guest room.
When he was sure that she had made the journey down the hall, he swallowed the lump in his throat, and thought meaningfully about the loss of Tenshi and Sasuke's child.
Later that day, when the sun was a fading halo of ringed gold in the pink-tinted sky, Naruto found Tenshi sitting quietly on the sofa, flipping through TV channels. The ends of her hair were damp with water, signaling that she had recently showered.
He placed his hand against the back of her head, idly pulling his fingers through the slick, inky strands before sitting next to her. She smiled, but the corners of her mouth were decorated with faint traces of despair.
"I've been thinking," he said, touching the side of her cool neck. "Maybe we should leave Shiragiku. I think… I just think we both need a change of scenery."
Tenshi's thin black brows scrunched together in confusion. "Leave? To go where?"
"This is just my summer house, remember? Residency isn't permanent."
"Then where's your real house?"
"Tokyo."
No. The saliva in her mouth suddenly vaporized, leaving her tongue like sandpaper.
"R-Really?"
"Yeah. In Toshima. You'd like it there, right? Tokyo?"
Tokyo. She braced the muscles in her body in order to concentrate solely on breathing. She clenched her jaw, picturing the dark inside of her chest cavity, where her heart and lungs were surely in an emergency state of panic. Unfortunately, this was no customary drill.
"Yes. I'd like it there," she said. Her lips began to quiver, almost as if they had recognized the lie. She firmly pressed them together.
"Great!" Naruto said, clapping his hands loudly once. She blinked very hard at the celebratory sound. "We should leave soon. In a week or so." He took a breath and released it in a manner very similar to relief, anchoring his back further into the sofa. He smiled softly to himself, and then at her. She tried to return it, but the muscles in her cheeks spasmed and failed.
"What's wrong?" he asked softly.
"Nothing," she said quickly. "It's just… What happened between us earlier—that fight—" she whispered, "I don't ever…ever want that to happen again."
"Tenshi—"
"Do you want to go bed?" she asked Naruto, standing to her feet when he attempted to grab the back of her neck.
"What? Uh, yeah, sure," he said, and she briskly began the walk from the living room into the bedroom without allowing him to finish his thought.
Once there, she shed her shorts and climbed into bed, pulling the covers up and above her head.
She was thinking about Tokyo. Tokyo and its slum-lined streets. Tokyo and its sewers. Tokyo and its secrets. There was nothing but filth waiting for her there.
She felt the mattress shift with Naruto's weight when he got into bed with her. For reasons he was unsure of, she deftly positioned her body in an angle that made it difficult for their skin to touch. When he placed a hand against her sheet-covered shoulder, she flinched, and he hid his exasperation because the bed was burning with the heat of her their combined shame and the day had already been long and tiring.
"I'm gonna shower," he said, removing himself from the room and the dilemma at hand.
When he was gone, she rolled over onto her back and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, breathing a sigh that made her lungs shutter.
On Naruto's side of the bed was the rude and reluctant fish, Ai, and Tenshi often found her graceful swimming hypnotic and relaxing, despite the fact that Ai seemingly despised her. As Naruto's shower began to run, she propped her head up on her fist and smiled into Ai's bowl.
"What do you say? Does Tokyo sound good to you?"
And then, for the first time since she had arrived in his home, Naruto's cheeky koi fish turned around in her bowl and stared directly at Tenshi. Her silver-tinged fins twinkled as she moved them against her body to remain in one steady position, the permanent pucker of her mouth coming closer to press against the glass.
And Tenshi didn't know why, but she began to cry.
She crawled to Naruto's side of the bed and put her hand to the glass, the tears becoming even more prevalent when Ai refused to turn away.
Pinned underneath him, long legs crossed at the ankles at the base of his spine, Karin groaned, her nails leaving quarter-moon crescents in the white skin between his protruding shoulder blades.
Sasuke closed his eyes as she moaned, each noisy exhalation of breath louder than the last until she was panting, and then screaming, her insides melting in slow, hot heat as Sasuke pressed all of his weight between her hips, his hand slipping between their sweat-wet bodies to rub against the tiny bundle of nerves inside of her. Karin, eyes rolling into the back of her head, went completely rigid before she relaxed, her breath gushing out of her in a dreamy sigh as she came. Sasuke finished a few seconds later, pulling out of her and tossing himself onto his back.
Karin quickly sat up, her cheeks dusted a dark pink. Sasuke idly watched the movement of her breasts as she raised her arms above her head in a stretch before he looked away.
"Sasuke," she cooed, leaning over to kiss him. He turned his head sharply, causing her lips to brush against his cheek. She frowned. "Sasuke-kun, what's wrong? I thought you were happy to be back home."
"Hn."
"Come on, baby," she purred. "I wanna fuck again."
He hadn't been seeing Karin for too long now, but when he did he almost always regretted it. She was clingy and whiny with God-awful red hair. She possessed all the qualities he found nauseating in a woman, but he tolerated her company because she allowed him to use her in ways that sated his ego without him having to involve any organs other than his dick.
He neither loved nor liked her, but she was enthusiastic, generous, and naïve enough to do nothing but give without noticing that he was doing nothing but taking.
He once more turned his head to look at her, his eyes trailing over the curves of her shoulders, the dip of her collarbone, the flat expanse of her toned stomach, the ridges of her narrow hips, and then the hairless mound between her legs.
Huh, he thought, disinterested, and declined her offer. "Go home, Karin."
She pouted, but nodded nonetheless before putting her clothes back on. Sasuke did not allow her to kiss him goodbye as he shoved her purse into her arms, walking her to the door where she gave him a half-hearted smile and left his penthouse.
He sauntered back into his bedroom where he sank into the bed, assuming Karin would return in the morning, allowing herself entrance into his home with the spare key she had stolen from a drawer in his office. Permitting himself to spend so much time with her would most likely lead to his body experiencing a nervous breakdown, but he was currently in the habit of wallowing in self-pity, and Karin had an interesting talent of perpetuating the delusion that he was not a bad person.
However, her presence did tend to sway him from his professional duties, as he had a stack of paperwork sitting on his desk that he had been steadily unable to complete. Indeed, Sasuke was especially unhappy, and Karin's pierced nipples and expert fellatio were not potent enough to erase his last moments with Tenshi.
He dreamed about her.
Every night his mind overflowed with blinking images of her smile, her eyes, the strained outline of her ribs that appeared when she removed her clothing. In his dreams, he remembered the slick silk of her hair, the gentle press of her fingers in his skin, and then the sweet moment would melt into pain and panic, and his vision would flood red.
He had been tied up in the Snake Room, a gag wedged into his mouth, watching his unborn child be forcibly removed from its mother's womb. From Hinata's womb. And those very real memories raped his peaceful dreams every single night.
His meeting Tenshi had not been poetic or accidental. In fact, it was seedy and unconventional. His father—half-mad on his best day—had been prone to bouts of inexplicable rage and destruction, and his tyrant-like ideals and behavior had driven Sasuke's mother to abandon them when Sasuke was a little more than four-years-old. In the aftermath of her departure, he had obtained a very loose, very biased understanding of women, and his father frequently used this handicap to coerce his son into performing acts that often both degraded and humiliated the fairer sex.
At what exact point in time Uchiha Fugaku had become associated with Orochimaru, Sasuke did not know, but his father's visitations to the Snake Room had been frequent enough to solidify a relationship between them, however unorthodox, and in what he hoped to be reflected as a token of friendship, Orochimaru had offered one of his girls to Fuguku's son, as Sasuke's twenty-first birthday had been quickly approaching.
Because it had been July, it was quite hot. Because Tenshi had been the girl Orochimaru had chosen, Fugaku was quite pleased. Because he had never seen a creature as devastatingly broken and beautiful as Tenshi, Sasuke was quite terrified.
What followed, he could not easily explain.
They were both isolated, and the isolation had created the loneliness. From the loneliness emerged an ache, and the ache made them vulnerable. Vulnerability bred naivety, which had led Sasuke to believe, at the time, that Tenshi had been made for him.
But Tenshi did not love him, not as she once had, and he felt the rejection down to the wispy makeup of his soul. Tenshi did not love him, and Hinata no longer existed. She had died that day in the Snake Room. He had seen the light leave her eyes the moment their child left her body, and now she was dead.
He knew because he had died that day, too. Sometimes he wanted her to know that. Other times he wished they had never met.
Those other times were far and few between.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment and exhaled through his nose before he peeled himself from the sheets of the bed.
He tidied, coming across long-forgotten pairs of panties he'd neglected to find and lost articles of paperwork he'd neglected to finish. When the underwear was in the garbage and he had everything piled neatly and orderly on his desk, he rolled his eyes and muttered, "Fuck it," deciding he would give Nara Shikamaru a call in the morning.
Haruno Sakura, at age thirteen, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, an illness that spurred erratic behavior and depressive episodes, ranging from simple nights with no sleep to days of her doing nothing but sobbing in her bed. The illness had prevented her from keeping long-lasting relationships, whether they were platonic or romantic, and she frequently found herself having energy-fueled bouts of mania that resulted in ruthless decisions and regrettable choices. She'd had many years to practice perfecting the illusion that her brain was essentially not broken, but every now and then the world would present her with certain triggers that set off either her mania or depression, and such a trigger just happened to be the fact that Naruto—whose sole purpose in life had once been to endlessly love her—had found someone else.
And not only had that particular someone else captured Naruto's attention, she had also once held Uchiha Sasuke's.
Sakura decided, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, that she was not handling this well at all.
Feeling her rational sense ebb away, she angrily raised a fist and smashed the face in the glass that was staring back at her. The mirror cracked, blooding pooling between the sharp crevices of the broken pieces and spilling over Sakura's knuckles. Tears welling in her eyes from the pain, she slowly pulled her hand away, wincing as pinprick-sized glass shards split off into her skin. She took a deep, hollowing breath, tossed her shoulders back, and rinsed her hands in warm water. After she'd picked out mirror remnants from her swollen knuckles and deftly wrapped the wound with gauze and tape, she combed through the length of her hair and turned off the bathroom light.
She then went to bed, climbing under the covers and staring at the dark blue of the rumpled sheets that were gathered at her waist until her eyes stung.
A hand clasped around her hip and Sakura looked to her left, watching as Sai frowned, his gaze lowering from her face to her bandaged hand.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I broke your mirror. Again."
"Oh. Bad day?"
She nodded. Sai brought her closer, the side of his face pressed against the swell of her hip. He kissed her skin through her cotton shorts. "We'll fix the mirror tomorrow."
"Okay," she said shakily, her bottom lip quivering.
Sai shot up, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. "Sakura? Are you okay?"
And she nodded, but he already knew the answer. She collapsed in his lap, suddenly a heap of tears and broken sobs. Sai quietly soothed her, his hands threading through her short hair, and Sakura thought for a moment that perhaps she hated him. She used Sai in the same way she used everyone, filling herself to overflow while leaving him completely empty. She was brash and beautiful and confident and cruel and she had wanted Sai to herself so badly that she had ended his previous marriage with his ex-wife, a woman who had loved him in ways that Sakura never could; in ways that did not leave scars.
But Sai had come to know Sakura more than even she knew herself. He understood that she was sick; that she needed someone else's love and devotion in order to feel whole and he was willing—both to Sakura's immense joy and immense displeasure—to be that person. So he let her break his mirrors and cry in his lap, and curse and scream and use him because he loved her. He loved her and she confused him, and he needed the wickedness in her heart in order to feel alive.
Sakura closed her eyes at the feel of his short fingernails breezing against her scalp, attempting to ease her thoughts but the relief of a silent mind would not come. She frowned as images of soft grey eyes permeated the space of her skull and she wondered how a girl as poisonous as Tenshi had come to steal Naruto's love.
It just doesn't make sense…
"What doesn't make sense?"
Sakura's eyes opened and she blinked, the gesture clearing both her vision and her mind.
"Nothing, sorry. I was just thinking out loud."
"About what?" Sai pressed.
Sakura did not answer him. She simply smiled that Sakura-smile and he knew he would get no more answers.
"You should sleep," she advised, sitting up and brushing pink hair behind her ears.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
"Of course," she said, pressing her mouth to his in a soft, plush kiss. "Sleep. Don't you have a client to see tomorrow?"
Sai nodded once. "Yeah. A pretty important one, too."
"Then sleep," Sakura commanded again. The sultry tone of her voice led him to kiss her, and though her psyche was too exhausted to fully commit to an evening of fucking Sai, her body needed the release.
So she allowed him to angle himself between her legs, her eyes following the shadows of his movements until she saw her sore, reddened feet.
She frowned, realizing she needed a pedicure.
Sabaku Gaara, possessing an acute case of chronic insomnia, could not sleep.
He lay awake in a large, lonely home in a quieter part of Yokohama, Kanagwa with nothing to do besides stare at the wall. It was almost three o' clock in the morning, yet sleep evaded him.
One of his aquamarine-colored eyes twitched.
Running a hand through his vibrant red hair, he contemplated taking a heavy object and knocking himself unconscious when a series of frightened, hurried knocks were heard at his door.
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. People simply did not visit him. He stood up from the sofa, listening to the knocking continue before he placed his ear against the heavy door.
"Who is it?" he asked slowly.
For a moment, he could've sworn he heard crying.
Curious, he looked into the peephole, only to quickly pull away from it and frantically open the door. Standing over the threshold, her fist still raised from knocking, was a young girl with long, dark hair and eyes the color of syrup. In her trembling hands were a bundle of pictures. Gaara felt his heart do something very akin to breaking.
"Sari?" he rasped, astounded. He pulled her into the house and slammed the door shut behind her. "Where the hell have you been?" His voice was thick with anger. "I haven't seen you in over a year."
Sari began to uncontrollably sob, clutching him with all her might. "A girl," she gasped, "is looking for you."
I'm so happy for you guys to finally get a peek at some of our other friends' perspectives! And everyone be sure to give Gaara a warm welcome into all of this drama!
