What Bloomed
Part Three: Was Guilt
At another point in her life, Madara's tears would have broken her heart. But now, all she did was stare. Maybe because he had trampled it to dust already. There wasn't much left to feel anymore, she told herself.
"I told them not to touch you."
"But it's alright to kill everyone else?" Sakura challenged.
"You were supposed to be green."
Her confusion overcame her anger. Just for a moment.
"When did I ever say that?"
She really thought back to their many conversations. Her being a dragon wasn't something they really discussed too much after her initial confession. At the time, she had thought it was Madara trying not to pry. Only now did she realize it was because he hadn't wanted to give his own secrets away. But never had she described her appearance to him.
"You said you grew up in forests. I assumed that with the natural camouflage you'd be green. Maybe brown," Madara explained.
The pieces fell into place. She could guess what had happened.
"You told them not to touch a green dragon. And when there were reports of some other dragon attacking, you didn't think it was me," she spelled out, mostly for herself. Madara didn't say anything. His shoulders hunched inward. She wondered if she was supposed to pity him. Was there something wrong with her for not feeling that way?
She knew why things had ended up like this.
She wanted to hate him for it. Hated herself instead when she couldn't.
"You should have aimed your spear better," was all she could think to say.
Dragons. Ancient dragons. The ones that had once ruled the skies only grew that way by eating. The more a mother ate, the larger her children would grow. And the largest ones were the ones who survived. So mothers razed the lands and devoured everything in their path. Because a sickly child was not one that would last in this harsh world.
The humans hated and feared the creatures that gobbled their flocks and ate their towns. As they learned to fight back against these monsters, dragons saw that their children would have to grow even larger to survive against these scale-less beings who wielded iron and fire to fight.
But the one weakness of dragons was that they hunted alone. And the one strength of humans was that they hunted as a group.
Humans took dragons as slaves and trophies. The remaining dragons out in the wild scattered. Starved and terrified. Those that grew too large, too ravenous, were quickly slaughtered. And as the centuries crawled by, soon people began to think of dragons as creatures of legends- never to return.
The truly ancient dragons slumbered beneath the earth. When they awoke to a land littered with the corpses of their kind, when they learned what had been done to their kin, it was the first time in history when dragons had gathered their strength to fight as one.
At the head of their assault was a one of the ancient dragons. One who had slumbered beneath the magma and dreamt of little whelps that he would teach to hunt. He woke to human empires built on the ruins of his kind instead. Where the leaders sat on thrones made from their skulls and laughed at their demise.
Madara woke in fury. He hated all these humans. But he wore the skin of one, shaped his beautiful body into something smaller to move unnoticed. He despised their ignorance. Their sense of entitlement. He couldn't wait to watch them all burn.
His blood boiled as he journeyed from city to city. As he read their ancient texts that boasted of their atrocities against his kind. The lords had bought their titles with the suffering of dragons. Selling their young. Slaughtering them in publicized death matches for a little bit of entertainment.
But then he met a girl. Inquisitive. And sharp in all the best ways. She wove her words around him as if setting a trap for him. When she smiled, pain erupted in his chest. So he resigned himself to like fleetingly. After all, she would burn with the rest. And when, against his better judgment, he took her into his arms, she turned around to whisper the most beautiful secret he had ever heard.
I'm a dragon.
At first, he wondered if it was a clever joke. One of the ones with a complex punchline that caught him completely by surprise. She was good at those.
But with those big eyes, she confessed to a life on the run. Hunted. Terrified at every twist and turn.
He pushed down the feelings welling up inside as he held her face in his hands.
"Thank you for trusting me, my love. I'm honored."
It was a second punch in the gut when she then asked a question.
"….I… I've thought about… can… would it be possible… if I wanted to start a family with you… could that even work?" she stumbled over the words. Probably not even noticing how they tore his world in two.
To imagine her, bathed in the moonlight. To curl up against their clutch, listening to their little heartbeats thrumming inside. His arms tightened around her. He hoped she wouldn't notice that he was crying.
"Oh… Oh, my love," he breathed. He wished he could stop trembling.
"With me?" He wondered if this was all a dream. "With me? Why? Why me?"
"You are a gift. I don't deserve you," Madara sighed.
A gift and a curse all in one. As beautiful and wretched as could be.
"Thank you."
She trusted him even then. Falling asleep in his arms. Not even fearing what he would do when he knew about her identity now. Someone else would have turned her in. Let them skin her and gut her to fill their pockets with gold. The very thought made him sick. So he banished such ideas. And held her closer. Wishing that the night would stretch on long and endless so that he would have time to think about what he should do.
She loved him. And it was worse because he loved her in return.
She dreamt of a future together. Not even hesitating to plan her life with a man she presumed to be human. She wanted to travel, to wander the world to see every wonder she could. Her face glowed with excitement as she imagine that rosy future with him. And may the creator of this wretched world strike him down for the way he lied and promised what he knew he could not give.
The time was drawing near. The promised day that the other ancient dragons had chosen to cleanse the world in flame.
On the day that Madara gathered the courage to tell her the truth, Sakura asked him whether he wanted a boy or a girl first. He pulled her into his arms and cursed her loveliness.
He tried to leave behind everything that reminded him of her. Tried. Because otherwise he would have left himself there too. But he failed miserably. The cloak he fastened around his shoulders smelled of her. His journal was peppered with sketches of her profile as she slept. In the early hours of the dawn, he stood at her bedside and resisted the urge to tuck her into his arms and steal away with her.
Would she be angry? Would she push him away?
He couldn't even muster the courage to press a final kiss to her pretty mouth before he ran away with his tail between his legs.
His heart stuttered in his throat when he learned that she had been in one of the first fortresses that had fallen. He twisted his body into its original shape. Great wings flapping against the sky as he rushed to the smoldering remains. The scouts there informed him that some of the humans had escaped. He clung to the hope in his heart that she was too clever to die so easily. And when she resurfaced, even as the face of the human resistance, he was happier than he had been in months.
The human resistance grew in size and power. They were resourceful. And they understood dragons in a way that only another dragon could. Many cursed the traitor who sided humans instead of her own kind. But Madara was quick to silence any talk of that with a snap of his teeth or a swipe of his claws.
He knew why she defended the humans.
Because she loved so freely and unselfishly. She couldn't stand the sight of crying children. She emptied her pockets of coins into the hands of beggars on the streets. She grieved the decline of her kind. Of the knowledge and beauty that had been lost. But she would never stand aside to watch an innocent hurting. That was just who she was.
And why Madara knew she would never be able to live with herself if he had brought her along. She would have been ruined with guilt. Unable to turn away from him. But unable to accept the suffering he wrought across the lands.
The war dragged on for much longer than anyone expected. He grudgingly came to respect the humans for their resiliency. Some of the others grumbled that they didn't know how to die gracefully. But others were patient. They knew that it was simply a matter of time before the humans collapsed.
A year after the war began, an ice blue dragon screeched across the skies. It was too large to be one of the children born after the fall. The ones fed on scraps and carrion, cowering away from the eyes of humans. This was a massive creature, rivaling one of the ancient ones. Madara sent out emissaries to make contact. They were repelled by a stinging wall of ice and wind.
"She doesn't seem too keen on talking to anyone," one of the emissaries reported between chattering teeth.
"She might have just woken from her hibernation. Might need some time to wake and get her bearings about her. Let's try again next week," another of the ancients suggested. And everyone agreed. A buzz of excitement traveled among them about the powerful ally they were about to gain.
The second group of emissaries returned after being buffeted by hail and frigid winds.
Madara should have realized then.
How she turned them away with no bloodshed. At the affinity for ice and snow. How had he not recognized her voice in the echoing shriek that shook the walls of the valleys?
So distracted by this new dragon, Madara failed to recognize that Sakura was missing from the front lines. He naively assumed that she had withdrawn to protect herself. As if that was something his love would ever abide.
The ice dragon swept across supply lines and blasted their strongholds to pieces. Only the ones foolish enough to venture too close were ever met with her claws and teeth. Madara was on the battlefield when he witnessed her snapping the neck of a young dragon who had attacked an orphanage. The crunch was sickening. Blood sprayed across the treetops.
And all he could think was: I'm glad she's not here to see this.
They fashioned a weapon to eliminate this formidable obstacle. It was a weapon of legend, pulled from the rotting books he had once studied with Sakura what seemed like a lifetime ago. They forged the blade from metal and their own breaths. It was a barbed, ugly thing, filled with poison. Whoever was struck with it would suffer for a long time before dying.
"Good. That's what a blood traitor gets," many whispered.
They had rejoiced when the spear impaled the ice dragon. Her blood spurting out as it dug deep under her left wing. Her shrill cry cut through the heavens. Some took bets about how long she would last as she faltered through the sky.
Madara remembered sitting his quarters, breathing a sigh of relief. Finally, with that nuisance gone, things would fall into place.
She bled beautifully across his sheets. And he loved her even then.
She bled painfully across his sheets. And she loved him even then.
Sakura opened her eyes, her head still throbbing. She didn't remember passing out in the first place. It was dark now. The fire crackling in the hearth filled the room with orange light.
Madara stood near the fire, his back to her.
"You know, it would be faster to leave me out in the woods to die," she croaked.
His head whipped around. He threw the book aside as he rushed over to her. Sakura could only stare at the book. She had never seen him mishandle a text like that- even the ones he declared "garbage".
Her gaze slowly fell on her right hand. Madara was gripping it tightly with both of his. She felt him shaking.
"You didn't expect me to wake up," Sakura observed.
"Forgive me, my love," he whispered, pressing her clenched fist to his lips.
"No." Sakura kept her gaze focused straight ahead. "I'll never forgive you. I'm going to make you live with that for the rest of your life," she declared. That felt more like a declaration of war than anything else she had done.
She had been unconscious for nearly a week. And during that time, Madara had frantically pored through every book at his disposal. And by some miracle, he managed to extract the poison. Enough of it for her body to slowly begin to knit itself back together again.
Sakura stared at her back in the mirror. No one needed to tell her. But with the scarring, it was possible that she would never fly again.
Yet another thing he had stolen from her.
Madara looked sick to his stomach when she told him so.
Curious gazes flickered toward Madara's quarters. Everyone knew who was inside. Some spat in her direction. Others lingered under windows and near doors, straining to catch even a snippet of their conversations.
"Are you going to let me go?" Sakura inquired.
Madara couldn't meet her eyes.
"I can't."
"Can't or won't?" she wondered.
She averted her eyes when he grasped her hands. He pulled them to his forehead, as if in prayer.
"Just one more day. One more," he pleaded.
She didn't know who or what he was pleading to.
Most times that he tried to strike up a conversation, she ignored him. And she ignored the food he set down in front of her. Even as her stomach twisted and gurgled at the sight of hot soup and warm bread. She pushed it away. Once she even smashed everything to the floor. Madara said nothing as he got down on his hands and knees to mop up the spill and gather up the shards.
But anger was draining. It was so tiring to stoke the flames of rage each time he entered her line of sight.
She curled up on her side and wished that she would wake up from an awful nightmare. Madara would hug her close against the morning chill. They would whisper about what they planned to research that day. Looking forward to the smell of old books and the scratch of quill across paper. Remembering that made the anger surge to the top for a moment. Anger at what he had given to her, only to snatch away.
Sometimes she wanted to punch him in the face. Other times she just wanted to cry.
"How are you so large?"
He asked the question like he was expecting her to ignore this one too.
Sakura lay on her side, back to him. Thinking. And then she heaved a sigh.
"Mother ate… everything. Fish, deer, garbage. Even dead humans. She dug up their graves and ate their bones."
Silence answered her.
"…Our kind… we're not meant to live this way. Scavengers. Tiny little things. Everyone was meant to be your size. Or even larger," Madara whispered after some time.
Sakura closed her eyes. "I don't know what any of us are meant for anymore," she replied.
He didn't know how to respond to that.
That was one of the few conversations he managed to hold with her. One of the others was about why she stood with the humans- even though he already had a feeling how she would answer.
"It's not that I don't want our kind to live. It's just that I don't think everyone else deserves to die," she said.
Madara's heart swelled with affection and pain all at once.
Madara slept in the armchair by the fireplace. Sakura knew she had taken his bed. And she didn't have any idea of what lay outside the door of this room, but she was certain that there were other beds he could have taken. Instead, he slumped there at night, looking like the weight of the world sat on his shoulders. And she wondered why she couldn't bring herself to pity him.
One night, Madara blinked. He had been dozing off with a book in his lap. Just something to pass the time. He blinked again when the book fell to the floor. Sakura slid into his lap instead.
'This has to be a dream,' was his first thought.
And when her arm slid around his shoulders, he was certain. That this was just a dream. He would wake up to the miserable consequences of his decisions. And she would still refuse to look him in the eyes.
Sakura smiled at him. For a moment, it was the way she used to look at him. Before she learned what an awful, twisted thing he truly was. Her hand smoothed down his cheek.
"You never said. Did you want a boy or a girl first?" she asked.
A startled laugh left his lips. It was a rusty sound. It had been so long since he had even thought about laughing.
"I don't know. I would have been a terrible father to either," he responded.
Her eyebrows knitted together. For a moment, she looked so terribly sad. And then she leaned in press a kiss to his lips.
He wanted her to whisper something. Anything. Even if it was an insult. Even if she swore to kill him someday. Instead, all he saw was the flutter of her eyelashes as her sleeping spell wove around him and pulled him down under the surface.
Madara woke to shouting in their base. As he turned his head to the window, he heard a screech vibrate through the air. An icy blue dragon flapped its wings. She flew crookedly, but she flew. Madara shed silent tears as he watched her fly off into the distance.
The dragons bathed the world in fire. The last human cities resisted to the bitter end. And then they fell. Perhaps some of the survivors scattered into the wilderness. Carving out families and societies underground or deep in the woods. They were resilient that way. That was part of the reason she had loved them so much.
Then word came. The news he had dreaded hearing each day. Madara shoved through soldiers and advisors. He warped his body, shedding thin human skin for his true form. He was speeding through the air- so quickly that the great flaps of his wings sent things toppling.
The battlefield was still smoldering when he landed. Spiky walls of ice were scattered among the ashes. Some of the fallen bodies were peppered with clear shards that had mixed with blood.
And there she was.
Her chest barely rising and falling. Her blood soaked the ground beneath her. Two humans huddled a little ways from her. One was crying. Madara wished he didn't recognize them. He wondered why one was missing.
"You have ruined me," he uttered as he fell to his knees.
She was so pale. But she somehow opened her eyes. They were too lucid as she found him.
She smiled.
"Good," she replied. She raised her hand. He wished she would muster the strength to punch him. Instead, she caressed his cheek as she asked: "Was this the only way for us to survive?"
It was a question Madara had asked many times before. Was it necessarily for humans to burn so that dragons may live? Was it necessary to destroy? But history had proven that only the strong survived. A gentle return would only continue the cycle of hunting and enslavement.
"Yes, it was," Madara replied. He grasped her hand and clutched it against his cheek.
"Then you did what you had to. And so did I," Sakura declared. He didn't understand why she was smiling at him like that. Beaming. So radiantly. As if he had presented her with all of the riches in the world. As if he hadn't burnt everything she held dear.
"Madara."
His gaze returned to meet hers.
She looked like she had something else to say. But then an odd look crossed her face. Her expression warmed again. And then her eyes closed for the last time.
Madara had been mistaken. He had thought these years of war and separation had been agony.
It was only now that he truly felt misery that engulfed his soul. He clutched her against his chest as he sobbed. Ugly, choking noises spilled from his mouth as he begged her not to go. Begged the gods of every religion he knew to take him instead. He pleaded for the heavens to have mercy just this once. To breathe the spark of life back into his beloved.
Sakura had loved him so tenderly. And he had tenderly destroyed her.
Blinded by his tears, Madara began to dig into the bloodied soil with his bare hands. He buried her body there, bathed her in his tears. So that when the land recovered someday, flowers might bloom over her. All the flowers he had failed to give to her in his foolish conquest.
The dragons celebrated for the first time in centuries. Finally, they were free to come out of hiding. They could reclaim the lands they had once roamed. To break into the abandoned human cities and lay the mutilated remains of their ancestors to rest.
Madara lay silent beside her grave. As the rain showered down on him. As the winds blew. As the sun seared the back of his neck. He waited until the first shoots poked their way through the soil over her grave. He didn't know whether flowers or weeds would grow there. It didn't matter, honestly. He gathered his stiff limbs and finally left her side.
He wandered. Not because he had nowhere to go. He was a hero among his kind. Any city would gladly open its doors to the one who had led their revolution.
But still, Madara wandered. Because there was no place with her anymore.
The cities to the north once boasted walls studded with jewels that sang. He went there first, only to find that the war had crushed those jewels to powder. They would sing no more. Madara journeyed instead to the east to see the oceans that turned red in the sunset. It was difficult to see beauty when they just reminded him of the oceans of blood he had spilled.
"I love you," she had whispered for the first time under the twinkling starlight. Even those stars didn't seem to shine as brightly anymore. That felt like his fault too.
The years bled into each other as he continued his travels. Never lingering anywhere for too long. Chased by a familiar shadow. Out of the corner of his eye, he would glimpse pink hair or he would hear a phantom laugh on the breeze. But always, when he turned, when he searched, he was alone. And it was what he deserved, he told himself.
It was a relief when he felt his body begin to fail.
And finally, when he felt the cold overtake him, he hobbled back to her grave.
It was covered in bright yellow flowers. He laid his head down on the carpet of soft petals. His heavy eyelids fell.
When he opened his eyes, his head was in her lap. She was as young and as lovely as he remembered. On her head was a crown of yellow flowers. She looked like the queen of some beautiful land. It suited her far more than blood and ash.
Sakura cupped his cheek. She leaned over to press a kiss to his lips. He fought the urge to cry.
"I need to tell you something," he croaked.
Her eyebrows rose. She touched his other cheek too now. Cradling his face with care he didn't deserve.
"I'm a dragon too," he whispered.
Sakura's eyes widened. It was a confession that should have come many, many years ago. On that night she had shared her secret with him, he should have shared his too. Madara searched her face. Would she shove him away? Would she curse him and hit him?
Instead, she leaned in close, her nose almost touching his. And she whispered back:
"You're a lying piece of shit."
Madara couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying. Perhaps it was both. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him. Tears flowing and flowing. Washing away the years of guilt that had clogged his heart.
"Was I right? Were you right?"
"I don't know."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."