Title: womb under water
Chapter: 1 – Year 0 to 1
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
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 1 of 6.
Notes: This story is completely written and will be updated once a week on each Friday from now until October 14th.


Listen very closely, listen very carefully. Do you hear it in the silence? Do you hear it in the screams?

Spun-glass mermaids, glittering aquamarine, kaleidoscopic melodies-

and the great dark birds of history circle and plunge

-shattered.

(A song her father used to sing: My name is Ariel and I want to be free.)

Is it this way? Is it that way? Or is this a maze without an end?

Was there ever a beginning?

A pledge to keep this dust of you, this soot-lined footprint, side by side, a couple paired: but when there is only one set-

Which of us carries the other?

Wing rush sounds, flush against improbability, seething, spinning, rolling. Cacophonous rage, sorrowful shooting starts, a universe uncurled, and

leap

no purchase found

And fall and fall and fall and fall once upon a time in wonderland we all went

M A D

Suffocation in fur, a woman's coat, thick and soft, a living thing's pelt another's luxury, slim shoulders and it slides off, heaped on the kite that soars in spangled fairy lights. False truths, future histories unwritten, fate strands tied and tried. Unwound then replayed, pen in the gears, rewind the tape, careful carefully.

Petals spread, Mother Nature's breathing silk, fae windows to faith-forgotten dreams-he loves me, he loves me not.

Dandelion buttercups, little yellow suns, reflections on the underside of a child's chin.

Poolside lanterns dangling, paper boats weaving, toothpick flags, sails of tissue in midsummer sun. Midwinter spins and lands, quiet in the cold, contemplation a puddle of endless depths and snapped empty shells, pistachios peeled.

Dog's breath on fingertips, too many legs, glowing green and seen and unforeseen.

(She doesn't remember how to- _.)

Fight.
They chose this. They did, they didtheydidTHEYDID

Help

Help
No knight slays this dragon. Armour less than a paper bag, a box of pencil crayons the colours a fan, infinite hopes, true form of what was left in Pandora's Box

rattling around

marbles in a soup can

Father, where are you? Are you coming, Mother?

The party has just

B-E-G-U-N.


Work. Work. Work and work. Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep it steady. Puncture lung whistling, blood bubbling on lips, cough once, twice, thrice and keep that head turned away, don't cough up red-stained tragedy on the patient, Sakura, that's just bad manners.

Shift. Breathe. Realign. Adjust.

No room for Inner, no spare change in the till, just green glowing hands, and a chest that's far too still.

Breathe, damnit! It's not over!

Crack the ribs, compression perfect, textbook example of what to do. Just right, just so, she knows this in the fiber of her bones.

Why won't she breathe?

In. Out. Up.

Down.

Stop and cough, no time for healer heal thyself, the point of no return looms and she, she will wrest this life back, this will be the last collapse of primary colour, blonde, blue, and red, so much red, red that seeps through her concentration—

She can't let it. She won't let it.

Come on, come ooon.

Scarlet spit-up, no time to care, pinch the nose, tilt the head, mouth-to-mouth, hope her blood doesn't aspirate the good of her breath. Once, twice, thrice, turn the page and start from the top. These questions aren't multiple choice, no marks are weighted for comparison.

Battle rages, someone's dead, someone's dead, but it's not her, it's not this chest, this precious commodity, this—this life, she will save. She's not dead yet. Ever.

Air-to-air and then back to compressions. She's running out of time.

Rills of shadow, needle points all, run through the room, light spinning in the darkened craze. Shake her head, fury undirected, and focus. She's supposed to be good at this!

("Wow, Sakura! A healer! Isn't that amazing? Maybe you'll cure every disease someday!"

and Father's indulgent smile.)

No disease is this. No virus, no calamity of genes, no coup d'état between bacteria, reactions waiting to be. To be.

That's all she wants, come on, Ino, come on, breathe again, please, please—
green light splutters, escaping over-worked fingertips. Sakura stares at her hands. Horrified. Fates sealed.

Then Ino coughs.

It has nothing to do with her.


Hail to the Queen! All hail to the Queen!

Hail! Hail! a parade of bent and torn cards, solitaire a lonely game. But, oh, look how it glitters on the hands of ingénues! They don't know about the maws and claws, the gaping jaws that ensorcelled them

why aren't you paying attention

(they're right there)

A wild choking, ice floes smashing the delusion, meteor fall, impact imminent—a graspless gasp. Memorandum undelivered, return to sender, address unknown, whole-souled rejection.

Return to:

He laughs, warm and familiar, heat sliding through her, soft out of affection, the sound turned gossamer, fine-tuning the rough edges.

"Curtains, really?"

Yes, she insists, tell me a story about the curtains, spin me a yarn about the furniture of love, each plate in its place, throw blankets, coasters, television playing something we'll both ignore.

That gets his slow smile. "Why will we ignore it?"

You know why, she says.

Green is the kitchen, pale like new grass, curtains white but embroidered, they can't decide on the colours, maybe all of them, no glass-top tables here, pale ash, polished to a sheen, chairs with short backs, no arm rests, spindle-legged on sets of threes. Blue dishes, like waves to drown in, to eat off, to stack and plate, to breathe and cut crystal cups, reflected rainbows in the Monday suns.

She wants all of them, so greedy, so taken. He'll give in.

"What will we do?" he wonders.

It doesn't matter. It can't matter. This castle in the sky is theirs. Let's run away and make it real.

Something shivers.

What even is real? Is this real? Is she real?

Catapult of cutlery, she is a spoon, then a meadow she's never dreamed of, the sky a galaxy of broken vases, nothing gold to remake them

this isn't her

Vines crawl up through her eyes, nerves turned to blossoms, fountaining bouquets of: (she can't remember the names of the flowers)

Hail, hail and long may she reign, focus tooled into leather, starbursts of leaves, why are you so angry?

What's wrong what's wrong what's wrong wITh

me

?


Crack. Crackle. Crackling.

Jagged lines, panels in a comic book peeling apart, the gaping, yawning blackness rises up. It almost swallows her whole. It could. It could. Inner peers, Inner snarls, Inner is—

Ino's breathing. Nothing else matters.

What miracle born of her failure is this? There's no time. Time stripped away, divinity can't be taken for granted, the stars: astrology is nothing here, far below the ground, gaping universes in front of them.

And the center of hers, right there, in front of her. Shore it up!

Will she let Ino die just because she wasn't the one to save her?

Green. The worst of all looks and she's dyed it to the bone.

("It's not like you'll ever be a real doctor," Father says. "Human hospitals are no place for an angel like you.")

But doesn't that mean she ought to be able to do this? If the flaw is hers, and it must be, then isn't there some recompense, some bargain, a bonus at the bottom of the cereal box?

Ino coughs again. Alive.

Alive.

A life.

Ignoring everything, including the depths of herself, Sakura's hands glow (green again and again and again; it's the only colour she's been granted, the only one she's been gifted) and

it almost works

almost

("Almost isn't good enough!" Father scolds her; a rabbit dead under her hands. Lesson failed.

-then

"Try again.")

now apply it

and she does, she does, pouring herself down, everything she's got and more, Ino's heart stabilizing while her own—

She misses it. Misses it.

("People aren't dolls, Sakura," Sasuke says.

"I'll be your doll, Sakura!" Naruto says.

But she's Ino's doll. Always.)

Ino's eyelids flicker, lifting a moment, and there's no blue expanse

Just gold.

Father's eyes, a split-second glance, then the blue erupts, reclaims, takes over. Sakura gone as she is, lost as she is, mired in the hollows of Ino's muscles, nerves, and bones,

Sakura

screams.

Ino slams the door, knowing it can't be undone, yarning herself into the seal, soul, mind, and body.

"GIVE HER BACK!"

Inner

ROARS.

(Ino's choice inviolate.)


it hurts

it hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts like a hand on a stovetop, smoking, blackening, obliterating why can't she think what was she doing where is she

(who is she?)

Starburst, popping flavour, candy apple, she feels her throat, feels her chest, there's green eyes spiralling down towards her, reality cold and harsh, highlighter, this will be on the test, remember it

Then the world lurches and all the universe swamps her again, and again, and she can hear it, like someone's screaming her name and she floats, a cloud of fairy floss, sticky and tacky and stained.

A gaping loss, in between flash points of real and not real, and she remembers: someone's dead, and her broken brain laughs and laughs, shattered glass agony swirling through her, stabbing her, she can't remember herself, what is she, but someone's dead.

Is it—(her?)

Reddish hair flashes across her mind and she knows it's not her, it's not her that's dead, it's someone else, someone important

But they'd known going in. They'd known.

Sacrifice.

But what's so important?

Nothing answers, nothing out of nothing, but she knows this. It's more stable than she is, who reels like a table missing three out of four legs, and who has no self, other than that she's she and she's someone who mourns and who is mourned, green eyes haunting each half gasp, each emptier than the last, and someone ugly welling up through her darknesses

Someone familiar, someone who

No! No, no, nonononoNONONONONONONO!

N O.

S. T. O. P.

Stomp sign red, letters white. Not gold, never gold, access denied

I'm dying for this!

The why of it, she doesn't know. But it matters, it matters, and it mattered enough to her to put her here, empty of most of who she was

That. That she knows.

Usually, wars are useless to the dead. But she grabs the spoons, the curtains, the boy. The butterflies and stars, the horrible, awful pain that's not hers and she'll

fight this even beyond

let her die

she doesn't know the meaning of losing