Title: womb under water
Chapter: 2 – Year 1 to 2
Author: Killaurey
Rating: M
Word Count: 1,750
Summary: AU. Once upon a time, nine children were kidnapped, bought, and freely given into the care of a stranger who would become their parent. They were broken down then reforged, reformed and redeveloped into man-made gods in furtherance of a grand, mad plan. The nine rebelled against their parent, as all children eventually do, and tried to save the world.
They failed.
Six scattered to the winds. One died. Two were left behind.
It will be six years before they are all in the same place again. This is the six years of the two left behind.
(Sanity is a sliding scale.)
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 2 of 6.
Balance beam beckoning, slipshod reckoning, Sakura's heels click on the stairs. Click-clack, click-clack. Her lab coat swishes against her calves, pressed white, starched steamed. Her long pink locks, drawn back in a bun, professionality.
Clip board held, tight against her chest, a shield closely kept.
The house around her, echoingly hollow. She's the sole pulse of life above ground. The rest have scattered, a year now gone, searching for—
a new type of existence they've never been allowed
-an escape.
we hate them Inner reminds her. they ran away / they left us / they've forgotten us
"Not that I disagree," Sakura says, "but we couldn't have made them stay. We're not the strongest nor are we the most charismatic. This house of horrors is…"
our home
Sakura can't deny that either. She doesn't even try. That's just asking for an episode. "We've located all of them," she says, instead. "That's something, isn't it? And Naruto said he'd swing by for a visit."
our letters unresponded / our inquiries ignored / our statements uncontested
"Kiba answered us last time," Sakura says.
fuck off / his response
"It's Kiba," Sakura says, a shouldering a shuddery shrug. "That he answered at all means he's fine. He did give us Hinata's address, you'll remember. Naruto's going to try to bring Sasuke for a visit. It'll be all of Team 7 here."
empty minds / empty eyes / empty hearts
"Yeah, well," Sakura sighs. "That's been us since we were taken. Since before you awakened. Wouldn't it be nice to be all together?"
and the others
"Shino's busy," Sakura says. "It's mating season for his bugs. Chouji's dead. We're going to see Ino right now."
the worthless shadow / neglected to mention
"We'll write him another letter once we're back upstairs," Sakura says. "I didn't forget him."
Though she wishes she could.
"Let's focus on Ino, okay? She needs us."
the prettiest doll / the prettiest shell / what mind
"She needs us," Sakura repeats.
Goldfish nibble on her toes, nails unpainted, the pool cool against her ankles
careful, so careful, a mirror of a thousand shards, her net cast through the cracks, the tightrope of should she could she—
"Good morning, Ino," a woman says, and her concentration scatters. "I'm Sakura. Are you ready? We've got…"
The words slide away from her, playground swings back and forth, back and forth, until she's past the treeline, past the bar and it's a challenge to gravity which will decide: will she or won't she fall?
Ino.
From a long distance, corridor echoing, the name crawls on bleeding hands and knees. That name is hers, so the green-eyed monsters hidden in a woman, says. A couple hundred repetitions, a repeat tourist, then lodging there, a seed carefully sown.
Does it really belong to her? that name? It doesn't sound like her, chalkboard and nails screaming down it, reverberations of her, tossed about, mosaic broken parts. She knows nothing. Even the alphabet is precious these days, though reading is a concept from another life.
Is Sakura really the name of the two in front of her? Shoddily split down the middle, fighting for supremacy, love and hatred intertwined, a living, breathing coin.
The tests hurt, sending her sanity out like stones skipped across a lake, bounce, bounce, and sink. Never any further. What price is this, that she's paying?
Why is she here? What does Sakura do this for?
Why did, the one and only time Sakura tried to take her from here, did she try to kill(h)er?
Sakura talks and talks and talks. Sometimes she listens, mostly she can't, too fragmented, a crystal sculpture that's been smashed on the floor. On the underside, sometimes it seems like she's being watched, like someone is there, dreams she doesn't remember
(who is
there?)
Sakura pulls out a comb. Ivory backed, bristles stiff. Long motions, endless tugging, somehow safety and pain tied into one.
"You don't really need it," Sakura assures. "You look beautiful. As always."
all her memories have no reflections of her.
test data inconsistent / irregular results
It kills her every time she leaves Ino behind, in that huge, horrible room of painful history. Except, a part of her that isn't Inner whispers, isn't that Ino's present? Maybe that's one of the problems, and she mulls that over as she and Inner head back up the stairs the way they'd come.
(What would happen if she ever left Inner behind?)
you cannot
She finds the answer comforting. Almost.
Maybe Ino's present and past are all tangled up. It's hard to tell. The mind has always been Ino's playground, while the body Sakura's. She's righted the ruins, rebuilt the bones, whittled the wire-thin strings of the seal as narrow as she dares.
But the mind…
Like she's gone caving without a flashlight. No map to mystery.
marionette's poses / silhouette's roses
"Do you think it's futile?" she asks. In the stairwell, her voice is very loud and the question very small.
Inner is answerless.
"I don't like how her body isn't responding properly either," Sakura continues, sliding past the sinews of that song without salvation, all the lyrics lost, unwilling to put to words the network of lies she and Inner weave, the underpinnings of their desperations.
(There are no understudies, should they fall.)
"She's in there and her mind responds to stimuli, but her body never moves without our aid. We'll have to review the footage, but I don't think she even blinks. Yet her eyes are never dry."
a doll / again
"I don't like thinking about that," Sakura says. "It's creepy."
But where's the lie? Ino might breathe and her mind might be in there, somewhere, but it's Sakura who clothes her, cleans her, dresses her. Who poses her. A dainty hand, just so. Ankles crossed just the way Ino always used to do.
The look is right but the energy that makes each delicate, painstakingly recreated tableau belong to Ino is gone.
matryoshka / perhaps / prize inside the inside / each layer different designed
"Maybe," Sakura says.
Sakura blossoms spin in swirls, pink and delicate, soft seashells without a shore. Straight-backed, a world of questions oscillating in fragrant, glittery glows off her shoulder blades.
The ocean swallows it all, a door clanging shut, metal bars dragging, huge chains binding, blinding.
Isolation in lethargy, her pool of goldfish have dissipated and she can't find them now. Maybe they're off in plastic bags, festival prizes, indulgences inflamed no one keeps alive.
(Am I the goldfish? Is this my bowl?)
She looks for words, but this is a problem no language can solve. She drifts, letting the words go, a ship in a bottle someone has filled with acid that eats at her unceasing.
Rows of white roses, stems deep green, thorns trimmed slim, a meaning she... she goes looking, paging through drenched and spoiled memories.
Purity, innocence, and eternity. Also devotion and silence, flowers talk.
Sakura says she's healed but it burns, it always simmers. Undine on fire, resonant treble, tremolo clandestine.
(Who is watching me?)
Again, it comes to her, radiation poisoning, quicksilver drunk, that something unsettling lives under the stairs.
Some... one?
Like she's a sketch, exaggerated fashion, a croquis sublime, and the colour has been filled in by-
she doesn't know
-ink poured until the well runs dry, fate inexorable, hands not her own, in control.
Longing pains for the oblivion of dreams of cushions and paintings, black hair and a plan, echo through the fathoms of chasms without definition, nothing certain.
Once upon a time, she was willing to die for this. This is the foundation of her soul, a boulder serene against all other loss. In the quiet moments, soothingly singular, she wonders what it was and why it mattered to her.
Does, still, perhaps. Can a thing matter without knowledge? The encore before the concert, slaughtering the order of-
Wind chimes hum, scathingly pure, and she slips away from that path, stars through a dark night: not her way to walk, not now, not yet.
But when, she asks.
There's no call and response, no glow sticks upraised, no dancing lines of guidance.
Sakura enters her rooms.
Blindingly bright, white on white on white, floors to walls to ceiling then spreading out, leaking out over her furniture. Pristine, precious peace. Simplicity strung along, in blankets and cushions, her vanity and her desk.
Accessories in colour. Popping splashes of vitalization. Fuel to further fortitude.
These things are precious, none of them picked by her. Ino only ever gifts things drenched in bold, beautiful hues. A blank slate, a canvas empty, that's Sakura. Ino spills the tint into her life and the others follow her lead.
("Will Sakura like this?" she's overheard, more than once, and Ino's never wrong, she always does, though Sakura never picks these things out herself.
Her mind's too full so she seeks out blessed blanknesses to hide herself in, relief of irrationalities.)
First step: her clipboard and notes set upon the desk. The blotter straightened compulsively. Second: Five steps formally, and she hangs her lab coat in the closet, pulling the sleeves straight, folding the collar neatly.
Third step: the bathroom. Her hands washed once, twice, and thrice. Hot, cold, and warm water sudsing between her fingers.
Then, check the time, and decide. This is where the path deviates, the shape of her days differentiates.
letters unrecorded reminds Inner.
"Right," Sakura says, brightening though it will be unpleasant. Writing to her siblings is an agony and a need. Estrangement holds no escape. "To Hinata and another to Kiba, to thank him and see if we can get more details of his doings."
and to him / vitriol update
Inner isn't talking about Kiba.
Sakura walks to her desk, twelve steps a little wide as thirteen in regular makes her uneasy, pulls out her chair, and settles into it. The sharp wooden spokes of the back comforting in their austerity. The bubbling green and trailing tassels of the cushion soft under her, another present.
"Him, first, I should think," Sakura says as she pulls out pale paper, as yet unadorned.
temper out Inner agrees.
Blue ink, calligraphy, and she begins:
Shikamaru,
Answer me, you coward.