Title: womb under water
Chapter: 3 – Year 2 to 3
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 3 of 6.
The airplane landing strip remains unlit as days as counted by peeled apples, probing tests, and Sakura repeating the same thing stretch on. At least, she is almost sure, the brush of dandelion fluff passing by, that it isn't the same memory, scenario on loop, again and again.
It could be, is the thing, except that the hair is sometimes worn loose or in braids, a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose. The other half comes out, now and again, terrifying and tender, hands steel bands to Sakura's ivory comb.
When the other talks, it's fragmented, altered, poured through a strainer, all extraneous parts left out. No pulp in the orange juice, a clean glass and a mess left about it.
How long she's been like this, progress stalled, engine shut down, she doesn't know.
Other things hold her attention. The creeper crawling, vines vicious, a pulsing, festering wound in the bottom of her sanity and it's taken her dream upon dream, lines cast religiously
(she doesn't know it, can't count it, but it's been years of days)
but that injury, pus puffed and sensitive, it does not belong to her.
This, then, must be the watcher that so unsettles her, frightens her, rings her in the failures of ordeals she has not yet mastered, glittering bright on her hands, wedding vow binding, sickness and health. Did she swear to it, this oozing fuss?
Yet she does not embrace it, the ocean of memories lapping shores apart, prising channels deep and fierce. Stay away, don't go, never look.
Sometimes she listens, lost in fog, white wool wrapped around the broken fragments of her psyche. Other times, she slides free of the bonds of her tattered sanity and explores, poking through bubble wrap and burning her fingers until she snatches back, allowing herself to be ferried up.
(that's what her mind is doing; she recognizes this now.
it's protecting her.
the question is, from what?)
Azalea, lavender, clover. Marigolds, larkspur, camellias. Poppies, dahlias, zinnias.
She knows these.
Now, they hide her. Recovery brings awareness brings threat.
(stop watching me)
Hinata answers her in long, chatty letters that say absolutely nothing of substance ever. They might as well be tissue paper for all the information they hold. When reading them, they don't remind Sakura of Hinata at all.
/ honest expression /
And that's true too. That's how they feel.
Sakura reads and rereads the missives in the evenings, once her work is done, and she can relax. The paper they're written on is lined. Not torn from a notebook, though, no ragged edges here. Red line drawing the eyes down, blue to break up the space. Like she's back in school, though Hinata had never passed notes when they'd been young.
She wonders if in these letters the real Hinata lays, the one allowed to grow wild instead of the one who'd been carefully pruned into proper formation here.
/ ask? /
"I don't think I'd dare," Sakura admits. "Not unnecessarily."
Which is what indulging this curiosity would be, prying where unwanted, and likely putting an end to these blithe, airy stories of places she's only read about, never seen. Hinata does not include pictures and Sakura doesn't ask for those either.
Hinata mentions having a phone but doesn't leave the number. Sakura doesn't begrudge her that: there are no phone lines here, no cell reception. This is an older place, a fae place, where technology is overshadowed by what can only be called magic and the two do not interact well.
To call anyone, she'd have to go into town, hours and hours away.
Sakura can drive. She could do it. Make a day trip of it.
They used to be allowed, time off for good behaviour, a prize for acquiescence, but she's never gone just as herself.
"Maybe we'll go, once Ino's better," Sakura says, knowing Inner follows her thought. She's part of them, always. "Once she's strong enough to use a wheelchair. She'd never let me push her around. Figuratively or literally."
A dream for independence, returned mobility.
That Ino rejects, violently, leaving her self-inflicted prison is ignored. This is a wishing soothe, not harsh practicality.
On the outside:
She sits.
Hair curled, nails a pale pink, dress and shawl soft and green, the colour of grass allowed to grow long and wild. Around her neck is a chain, amethyst butterfly dangling, never allowed to be free. Her chair is new and has wheels.
Sakura has locked them.
Around her, there is a few chairs, a couch. A desk. All in Sakura's strict preference. And why not? Sakura is the one that uses them. Not her, who never moves, an ice sculpture of a woman, frozen solid and beautiful.
And hollow. When Sakura shows her the mirror, she hates to look at herself.
She hates more that she can't look away.
Sakura has left for the day, though, and that's the important thing now.
(She's ready.)
On the inside:
Red desert sand is hot under her bare feet. Her hair tumbles loose, longer than Rapunzel's, a banner streaming in the wind. No tangles here, not of vanity. A t-shirt dress, freeform waving, and a pair of leggings underneath complete the doodle of herself. Sketchy and casual.
She crouches, leaps, flying over dunes brushed silver, the hot sun turning glittering red into diamond sparkles no hands can ever grasp without destroying. Wind pushes at her, claws at her, forcing her back but she is relentless as her namesake, stubborn literally beyond sanity, and it goes on for what feels like days but could be years or months or seconds stretched out like gummy worms.
Reverse oasis is where she alights, breathing raw, deep in her chest, the motion echoed out by her body.
Down here, in the inhospitable remnants of an ancient ocean, a pool of black murk, thick and sticky resides. The carapacial sheen, rainbow refractions, pulsating and bubbling, cracks in the mess. She moves towards it, blistering toes and heels, impossible heat. Imaginary.
She says:
"My name is Ino."
Defiantly tossing syllables towards the source of pestilence, she braces for battle.
It is the first time in three years she has called herself that and know the truth of it.
Under her feet, everything lurches.
"Emergency. Emergency. There is a disturbance in the Shrine. I repeat. Emergency. Emergency. There is a disturbance in the Shrine-"
"Ino!"
Sakura shoots up in bed, dead sleep a dreamer's reminisce. Blankets flying, pillows colliding, sliding off the edge. Her heel touches the floor, first one, then the other, the prescribed steps to the bathroom door.
/ time / Ino's call /
But Inner's voice, a stark reminder, does not judge as Sakura washes her hands, third time's the charm, then her face. Fast as she can go while adhering to her routine. Brush the hair, but leave it loose: permissible in the cool corpse of night. Make the bed. Ankle socks, capris, bra and t-shirt. A living ghost clad in a white shroud. Ballet flats, adorned with a ribbon.
All the while, alarm blaring, klaxons clanging, the voice on repeat:
"Emergency. Emergency. There is a disturbance in the Shrine. I repeat. Emergency. Emergency. There is a disturbance in the Shrine-"
Ready, set, and go.
As soon as she shuts her door behind her, her realm of calculated order, nothing held back, flying down the stairs in whipspun rounds, momentum used and abused on each railing. Carefully controlled coordination.
She can't afford to fall or slow down. It's taken too long as it is but she'd had to follow the rules or else she'd have been no help at all. Her feet slap a staccato counterpoint to the harsh pants of panic she can't, she won't entertain.
(The exertion itself, just another day.)
The final floor, she hits running, bolting past the couches and the empty rooms, slamming into the heavy door, ingress obtained without permission.
Here, the sirens stop, the dispassionate voice doesn't reach.
Ino has collapsed from her seat, back arching, eyes rolling, long nails clawing at her face. One shoe is lost as her feet beat rapidly. Blue tint spreading.
She takes it in a glance. Seizure. Why it happened, she'll figure out later.
As she sinks next to Ino, her hands glow green. She'll stop this. She'll fix this.
There will be a later.
Her mind is full of wind.
A purl of twisted oxygen, a young girl's hair ribbons, they curl and swirl in desperation. It creeps and crawls, simpers and swaggers, wanting to draw her back, swallow her down.
"Stop that," Ino says, brushing the looming insanity back, her own imagination a fanning barricade.
"Hello, child. What manner of defiance is this?"
While the vagaries of Ino's see-sawed puzzle have rearranged and pieced themselves into a new configuration, her unwanted guest has climbed out of the tarpit.
"Hello, Mother," she says, because there's only one person that she considers her father.
Mother, though, she'll grant.
Orochimaru has never cared what gender they assign, what title bestowed. Each of the siblings, their own choice decided.
("Gender's a silly question," Mother had said, with an enigmatic glance, a snake's grin, many moods ago.)
Now she waits for Ino to look her fill, answer her properly, arrogance a window cling, patience a sham. No false airs, only comfortable truths. Just like always, cruelty and love, one single kink in a braid.
Crux of it, truly, the foundational piece. They have been both tortured and adored.
"Mother," she says, locking her hands in front of her, a seemingly casual pose. "It's the same as always. You look good."
Orochimaru sighs, a sweeping, chiding sound.
A twinge of guilt is felt, ignored.
"We've been over this," Mother says patiently. "This world is inadequate for all of you to flourish. What else to do but remake it into a stage fitting for you?"
"Billions of lives, Mother," Ino says. "We might not know them or fit in with them, but they still exist and they matter."
(A wish for her father, that he's still alive, unspoken, barely dared to think in the spaces between heart beats.
Would he still want her?)
"How will you stop me?" Mother asks, sounding genuinely curious. "In tearing apart the scab, you've opened the door to me."
Butterfly shards of crippled sanity. She knew, she knows. evanescent radiance eradicating her, a slow fade.
Ino smiles like a flame. "Let's play a game."