"Moira: destiny, the will of the gods, fate.
Singular of moirai. "
i. Walking.
Sakura's world has always been balanced on her worth as a Konoha shinobi (as her worth as a person was so low, wasn't it? Never good enough for her own mother, never enticing enough for Sasuke's affections, never important enough for Kakashi-sensei's attention, always dragging everyone down as she fell to an emotional mess, always second to last- never good enough to merit anything but a participation trophy) but, as she watches his retreating form and feels the buzz of Anbu chakra grow nearer and nearer- she breaks her unsure steps. She runs.
.
Every step she takes forward he takes back, seeming like a caged animal as his distressingly amber eyes flit from place to place- 'He shouldn't be here and he shouldn't be alive,' she thinks as the face of Pein twists in feral panic 'Is the world ending again?'
iii. Wishes.
"Why?" He croaks in a voice much higher than that of his puppeteered corpse, bluish fingers knotting in the rich pumpkin of his greasy tangled hair, the desperation in his voice making her stomach twist in a painful knot- "I remember everything, I don't want to."
iv. Wonder.
She doesn't know why she followed him, her brain suggesting medical instinct, her heart knowing it's a desperate need to heal a crippled bird as he lays in front of the fire: his eyelashes glittering with the raindrops they soaked in before finding shelter in the cave, his form statuesque as if taunting her, the beautiful slopes and ridges of his face marred with piercing that leak and crust with a foul looking substance. Why is she here?
v. Worry.
"It hurts," Yahiko says in a way that slices through her defenses in one swing, his freshly bathed form curled with his back to her on the cheap motel sheets- his vulnerability making her thoughtlessly press her hand to the spine of his nude figure: greedily stealing his warmth "Why would he do this to me?"
vi. Whimsy.
It's been so many months on the run the nights blend together, and she still doesn't know why she came; why they lay shoulder to shoulder or back to back on motel beds, why he let's her clean his infected piercings, why their bodies always drift so close even though she knows he's a devil in lamb skin. ('I am me,' he had said bent over a Kumo Anbu's crumpled corpse, chakra radiating and twitching with something that made her insides seize and her body feel alight 'But, I am still him.')
vii. Waste.
As the concrete building that had secretly housed Akatsuki for years grew on the horizon, her head pounded with a fear that demanded she answer why she threw her life away for the husk of a man who she can only pray to be able to fix. (The small voice in the back of her head screams she destroyed any chance of happiness the day she became a genin.)
viii. Whiskey and Rum.
In a room lit by dusty candles, they lay across expensive sheets that some S-rank criminal once owned. Their bodies close in a way that their breath heats one another's faces in visible puffs- celebrating something trivial enough to be forgotten as an excuse to warm their shivering forms with old bitter liquor. In a drunken stupor his body thoughtlessly eclipses hers, leaving Sakura burning from the inside out.
ix. War.
There are pieces of her life she had left in what remained of Konoha, and she misses them as terribly as she misses the girl she was before the constant wars had sunk its hooks into the soft parts of her skin. He understands in ways they have no words for.
x. Weddings.
The girl she used to be still dreams of white picket fences and a husband and a love that grows like ivy in the garden; the longing leaving her breathless from silently sobbing until her gasps turn to dry heaving. Under the sheets he wraps her body in his in a way they still don't name.