Wind-Up Dolls

Summary: A fairy boy and a nothing girl find each other. AU Homeless SasuSaku

Songs listened to: "I'm in Here" by Sia, "If I Apologized" by Josephine Cronholm and Ashley Slater, and "Childhood Memories, Shut Away" from the Evangelion soundtrack.

Sasuke is nine when saltwater prisms begin to decorate their tiny home. His father hates them because they're girly and they glare in his eyes, but Sasuke likes the way they capture sunlight rainbows and he can live just a little bit in the sky.

It's Valentine's Day and I no longer exist.

Chapter Ten

Sakura curls up comfortably on her mattress, watching while Ino twirls around the room like a fairy godmother. She taps her magic wand to the bed, and the indigo fleece blankets Sakura's come accustomed to transform into slinky crimson silk, spilling over the edges like red wine ready for the tasting. Sakura imagines lying naked, twisted in the ruby sheets like a Botticelli statue where she could fall asleep and never ever need to wake up.

It's been a long day of hard work and long performances. There was some sort of discount on tickets that people drove in from out of town to take advantage of. The men were pensive and the women were irritable, and Sakura was thankful to be alone with the animals for the majority of the day.

"Up, up!" Ino flaps her arms and invisible wand at Sakura, shooing her into the corner where she'll be out of the way. Sakura tries to make herself small, not wanting to be on the receiving end of Ino's testiness that's been the prevalent emotion of the day. The trundle bed is reassembled into one form, and Sakura's dirty sheets are thrown into the hamper and shoved into the small closet.

Though Sakura is curious about what the heck Ino is doing, she simply stands and observes. Ino at work reminds her of Sai in the studio, measuring light beams and adjusting totem poles amongst fields of feathers. Then Sakura would be crucified and Sai would eat her alive. But Ino is sprinkling pink rose petals across the bed and materializing candles from nowhere, and Sakura knows it is not she who is going to be taken.

"Oh," Sakura finally nods in understanding, "Sex. Is today Valentine's Day?"

Ino laughs throatily, the cause of her irritability sexual frustration that is about to be sated. Sakura is no stranger to sex, but she can't remember ever desiring it. There was never any pleasure involved.

Ino changes openly in front of Sakura, as she always does. The negligé she purchased for herself is violet lace and it fits her like possessive hands. Sakura watches enviously as her role model admires herself in the mirror, Where Sakura's chest is sunken teepees and blisters and puckered scars of abuse, Ino's breasts are firm and round and everything Sakura ever wanted for herself back in middle school when she would stay up late reading her mother's Cosmos.

But unlike what Sakura is used to, Ino removes all traces of make-up before sex. She can't understand it. She thought the point of this romantic crap was to force a day of love perfection?

"I hate to do this to you, Sakura, but you can't sleep in here tonight. We'd just do it in Shikamaru's trailer, but he bunks with Chouji…I know! Why don't you just crash there for the night? Chouji is totally asexual, so you don't have to worry about him pulling anything," Ino says, arranging herself over the blood red sheets the way Sakura dreamed she herself would, "Could you get Shikamaru for me, please?"

Sakura nods, because what else is she going to do?

The night is a mist of needles, pricking her cheeks and eczema-eaten knuckles. It was so sunny and very nearly warm that morning. She'd woken up and the sun rays had warmed her cheeks and set her skin on fire. She'd laughed and spun until she fell onto the greedy earth where the grass was so dead and desperate. Just as it eagerly devoured the sunshine, it absorbs the prickling mist like a starving child.

She knocks on Shikamaru's door and he answers, looking uncomfortable and in need of a good night's sleep he won't be getting. He and Ino will entwine in that rosebud bed, the thorny vines tangling them together and spilling their blood invisibly across the crimson sheets.

"Ino's waiting for you," Sakura says, imagining the rose petals between her fingers. The magic Ino bestowed them with might heal her.

Shikamaru smiles a little bit tentatively and his face starts to fade. His eyes and nose and lips are swallowed into nothing and she can do nothing but watch. He grabs the bouquet of lilies from the vase by the door and starts off toward his destination. And even though it is all very clichéd and has been done by every man and woman before them, Sakura wants to be pleased by the thought that maybe love isn't dead. But instead she's just scared.

Rather than bunking with Chouji, she opts to sleep with the animals so she can think and possibly cry. She's not used to living like a human being, and sometimes creeping away from all these people with the knowledge of propriety so thoroughly ingrained in their bones makes her feel less alone. Maybe she'll sleep with the bears. As long as they don't feel like wrestling.

But maybe she should just leave. First Suigetsu, then Kisame, and now Shikamaru. They're fading away. And if ghosts can haunt her here, this can't be home, can it? She's made a mistake. There's a place for her where bad things can't touch her, right? Where she won't feel scared or afraid?

The earth moves beneath her feet and clings to her shoes affectionately. She could do it. She could leave the comfort of fleece and color and return to vacant blankness, just for a little while until she found somewhere safe. She is strong and she can do it. Maybe…but…

When she is almost to the animal pens, she hears some muttering and then someone calls her name.

"Sakura!" she turns around and Kisame, Itachi, and Sasuke are standing there. It must've been Itachi who called out to her, "We're going to a movie. Do you want to come?"

Her heart and stomach turn into fluttering butterflies, tickling her cheeks pink. She thinks back to the magic rose petals, imagines Ino blessing her with wishes in her bliss. But then she looks at Itachi's walking stick and remembers again that she's so stupid, that Ino is no magic genie.

"Aw, don't invite her along. She's weird and nasty and she's been wearing those clothes for days," Kisame grouches, crossing his arms over his chest and turning to Sasuke expectantly. It's always Sasuke, and maybe it always will be. He's what anchors her here, what whispers in her mind as she tries to sleep that this is home, and that she's a flower that just hasn't bloomed yet.

Kisame doesn't hurt her feelings. He just confuses her. If they're inviting her to make fun of her, then they should all be acting all nice and dumb and then do something to humiliate her when they've gotten her hopes up.

"You say that like I know what she's wearing," Itachi says and walks toward her, tapping out the path with his cane. It gently hits the toe of her sneaker and he stops.

She won't let them make fun of her. "I don't understand. You're blind and it's Valentine's Day. Why aren't you having sex with Konan?" Sakura demands, arms folded in front of her like a protective shield. They wont hurt her. They can't hurt her.

Sasuke coughs a laugh into his fist, but Kisame doesn't even bother muffling his flat out guffaws, "Never mind. I might like her after all."

Itachi's lips slant in an expression of slight annoyance, but eventually twitch into a small smile. Again, Sakura feels out of the loop and maybe kind of stupid. "What?"

They don't go to a movie theater, they go to a drive-in. Sakura went to a drive-in once a long, long time ago, she thinks. But when she tries to remember who took her, she only gets the vague impression of a woman who felt like home sitting beside her in the front seat of a shit-hole mobile home. She remembers the smell of a lit cigarette, the crunch of caramel covered popcorn between baby teeth that threatened to fall out. The people on screen were having sex, she thinks. She was four and she knew what sex was. She remembers giggling at this knowledge.

Sasuke parks backward so they can perch comfortably in the truck bed, looking out over the field of lovers lacing fingers and limbs under the cover of quilts. They're watching a silent black and white film and Sakura cannot for the life of her understand why Itachi would want to come. But he looks unperturbed, faintly smiling in his position against the hub of the car as he enjoys the soundtrack.

Sakura sits at the very edge of the truck bed, soaking in the sensations of her first real trip out with the guys. They want her here. They asked her to come because they wanted to be around her. She absorbs the taste of the winter air in her mouth, the scratchy feel of the dirt and abandoned threads of hay beneath her fingers. The presence of Sasuke right behind her, watching the big screen with dimming eyes as the night gets older.

Sakura very much enjoys the simplicity of romance in old films. Coincidence and chemistry are the only magic ingredients required for everlasting love here, and somehow Sakura finds herself believing in that love without a doubt. Maybe it's the charm of knowing that this love story happened so long ago. Knowing that whatever happens in the end, the pain has been eased by time.

Time progresses and eventually Sasuke withdraws himself from the truck and wanders off somewhere. Sakura mourns his absence but does not pursue him because she wants so badly for the colonel and his mysterious lady to be reunited. Kisame narrates the film to Itachi quietly behind her, and this is the first time Sakura has ever seen the strange-looking man behave in earnest. It is the first time she can understand their friendship. Even though Kisame is often inconsiderate, even though he frequently does what he can to trip up Itachi in his moments of blind confusion…Kisame truly respects him.

He is tall and blonde, skin freckled with kisses from the sun. Sakura trips over herself, stumbling out of the back of the vehicle and onto the dirt ground beneath. She stutters out an excuse about needing to use the bathroom and Kisame laughs something insulting that she doesn't hear. She trails after the boy, air leaving her lungs in eager, desperate gasps.

"N-Na…" She tries to call out his name, but finds herself unable to speak it, slipping on words and the earth and almost collapsing.

Someone calls out a name, a pretty teenage girl with long brown hair and a charming smile, and the boy turns around to give her a wave. It is not Naruto. It is not Naruto, but…but God, so close…

Suddenly oxygen is returned, but too quickly and with a nostalgic burn and she feels dizzy. She puts a hand to her head and turns around, and Sasuke is there, leaning against the wooden pole of a streetlamp, smoking a cigarette. The smell of fire in the air is suddenly understandable, but the image of a tired, green-eyed woman with stick-thin bones and no smiles is burned into her brain.

"Sasuke," she says, curling her arms around her ribs. She can't be hurt. She isn't…hurt…

But he is beautiful. Unfairly so, really. If he were to lose his face like the others, she thinks what she would regret losing the most would be his dusty-fringe eyelashes. They are not black like his hair. They are a deep grey color that reminds her of snowstorm nights, of staring out the window in the recliner, wrapped in Dan's arms while he'd breathe clove-oil smiles into her hair.

She steps toward him, not because she's feeling brave but because she is lost and sad and forgotten. And when he glares at her, his voice is almost a growl, "Stop following me."

Sasuke

He knows that this is what he wanted. To get out for a night and see a movie, to hang out with the guys and not just be out for the sake of being out. But not tonight. Not because it's Valentine's Day, but because tonight he is angry and he doesn't know why.

Hurting Sakura feels kind of like maiming a baby duckling. But it pisses him off how she watches him and follows him and treats him like he is her reason for living. Find a different reason, he wants to scream at her, to feel her brittle bones crack beneath his fingertips.

"It's because I want to repay you…for all you've done for me," she says, hiding her mouth behind bitten nails. He hates how when she's around the others she tries to make herself something different. Like a baby fawn or a preying lioness, depending on what she's hiding from. But with him, she's just that stupid baby duckling, following the Pied Piper to what she hopes is redemption. Maybe there's something in him she needs hiding from, too. And he hates that.

"Letting you join Akatsuki wasn't a favor. It doesn't need repaying, so leave me alone," he snarls, shoving away from the lamp pole, ready to get back to the car and watch the remainder of the film in an awkward, tense silence.

But she walks closer to him until she's invading his personal space and he can feel their precious body heat culminating between them. He'd step away but he's not one to back down. She smiles-frowns-smiles, her marble eyes glittering with wishes on shooting stars and says, "That's not the favor I was talking about."

Then she steps away, winter once again breathing between them, and she trots back to the car. He watches as her clothespin figure vanishes into the darkness beyond the streetlamp's halo, and suddenly he is not angry. He is alone.

Mikoto ruffles her needle-bone fingers through the tufts of Sasuke's raven feather hair. He shoves them away even though he maybesortof likes it, because he's growing older and it's what he's supposed to do.

"I love you, Sasuke," Mikoto says, and her breath smells like sickness. But Sasuke can see no evil, that blind son of a bitch.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

A/N: I dreamed last night that I updated this story four times in one day. Sorry that's not actually physically possible. I would have updated this on Thursday, but I didn't like the way the chapter was written and I rewrote the whole thing. I think this version is a little better. This chapter takes place two weeks after the previous, just so ya know.

BTW, thank you all so much for the really really wonderful reviews! I appreciate them so much, you don't even know. I actually reread them fifty billion times because they make me wanna write more so badly. Hahaha. I'm insane.

Please review!

-MT