Part 4 in the Obelisk Series:
Kingdom of Man, Kingdom of Beasts, Kingdom of Monsters, and Kigdom of Gods.
OBELISK:
KINGDOM OF GODS
I don't know how to stay tender
with this much blood in my mouth
-Emma Tranter
excerpt from the heartless girls zine
Recap:
Sakura glanced down at what she could see of the eye marking on her left shoulder before looking to her right and seeing the exact, but reversed image of the Egyptian eye on either shoulder. The Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra. Several inches below the eyes her arm was encircled with a band of star shaped dots. Each of her index fingers was burned with a similar star, but only her index.
By far this was her most expansive tattoo.
"The eyes to see now rest atop your shoulders, my friend," Sai joked. "Be proud, you've won for yourself two different god tattoos in one dream. You are three fourths of the way to the end of everything."
Sakura smoothed back what was left of her ruined hair and glared up at Sai, but it was Sasuke who ended up laughing, oddly enough. She turned along with Gaara and Sai to stare at the young brat prince who seemed to have lost it.
"Of course it would be you," he laughed, still holding his elbow. "The bastard gods have lived in these lands since time immemorial, and you kill two of them. You're mad, you're crazy. Of course the woman stupid enough to save an enemy is the one that does the impossible," Sasuke laughed.
Sasuke dissolved into giggles and Gaara turned to look at her again. "Was that not a mistake? Did you really do that? He's not a decent fellow and sort of an asshole."
Sakura touched on of the eyes on her shoulder and then looked back up at Gaara. "I've had enough of death and killing. I just felt really bad for how he was written, it's not his fault."
"She's crazy," Sasuke continued to laugh, falling back on his rump from the shakes.
"Hmm, he may be right about you, though." Sai came up behind her and pat her head in praise. She felt how short her hair was on one side when he ruffled it. "You're crazy enough to be what this world needs."
Sakura woke up sore, but free from the stick of god ichor, and smelling less like a desert and more like the lavender in their detergent. She groaned and reached up to feel her throat. There was nothing there to feel, but she could see the black lines on her shoulders so she suspected the sun arms running down her neck were visible in the real world as well.
It wasn't an early morning anymore, but a mid morning with a high sun sending short shadows into her room. It was still summer, but where she was staying so high up there was a nice chill thanks to the elevation. Sakura pulled herself up out of bed and into the bathroom, making sure her door was locked so that no one could come in and disturb her.
She saw the black lines right away and winced at how noticeable they were. Someone was going to think she had issues if she was seen on the street with such intense tattoos. It was too much to try and cover up with concealer, also.
There was a knock outside the door and Sakura stilled.
"Hey, Sakura, it's me. You in there just fine?" Yamato asked, sounding worried.
"Don't be creepy," Sakura called back, turning the water on. "I'm fine, you don't need to check up on me when I'm in the bathroom of all places."
"You've been in bed all morning and I didn't want to wake you. The kid has been pestering me to let him know the second you are awake so you can work together," Yamato called back through the door.
"Jugo?" Sakura guessed. He was the youngest out of the three that always seemed to be watching her.
"Who else?"
Sakura looked back at herself with the tattoos on both shoulders and neck. She could hide the eye tats with a long enough shirt, but the arm rays on her throat would be too difficult to conceal. They came up under her jaw and it was the height of summer. Even in the mountains it wasn't cold enough to justify anything concealing.
'Why do you want to hide your tattoos anyway?' a voice inside her asked.
Sakura leaned back away from the mirror and rubbed at the base of her neck. Tired all over, she couldn't explain or justify the churning in her gut that spiked every time she thought about exposing that part of herself to others. She knew in the real world there were people who wanted her dead, who saw her as a threat. It was funny because they actually believed she was dangerous enough to warrant extermination. They wanted to kill her, but at least they believed in her.
"Sakura?" Yamato called out again. "Are you hungry? I'll get you something to eat. If you don't wanna work with Jugo just let me know and I'll tell him to scram."
"Don't be mean."
She could just imagine Yamato's pout. "I'm not mean!"
"You tease that poor kid more than anyone I know."
"He starts it."
Sakura pulled open a drawer and reached into the mess looking for the scissors. "That's not true."
"Sakura…you didn't tell me if you wanted breakfast. I'm getting you something to eat like it or not, you might as well tell me what you want."
Sakura ran a hand through her hair, frowning at the messy tuffs on the side of her head, left over from her fight in the dream world. It looked terrible. "I'll get something when I'm done with my shower. Don't be a perv now."
His sputtering would have been adorable any other day, but Sakura was too distracted from all her emotions to muster up a smile in reaction. There were things she didn't want to feel and things she didn't want to remember. So much had happened last night, but all she let herself dwell on was the fight with the bastard god and the gold ichor that still stained the back of her teeth. If she ran her tongue over them she could taste his blood there.
Her hand started to shake wildly and Sakura dropped the scissors into the sink and braced on the edge as her gut rolled. She felt the cold smooth of the porcelain, the droplets of water left behind,, she felt the tile under her toes, the itch of cotton under her arms, the edge of her teeth in her mouth.
It kept her from reeling.
Sakura struggled to ground herself further, dropping the scissors and reaching into the drawers to run her fingers over the compacts, the tubes of lipstick, the brushes, and even eyelash curler. Every curve and edge helped pull her back to the moment where reality didn't hurt so bad.
"You've killed two ancient bastard gods, you can't not be fine," she told herself out loud. Her own voice was a sound that led her back.
Sakura dropped to her knees on the tiled floor and then turned around so her back was to the wall. She closed her eyes and stretched out her legs in front of her. She could feel time move around her, slip over her, and pass her by, but she wanted it to stay still. Time was moving on headless of her desires, but she still wasn't ready to get up, and she feared she might never be ready.
She wanted Karin. She wanted Ino. She felt alone and it had been so long since she last saw either of her friends. Karin knew were Sakura was, but Karin was busy with community college and Ino had an acting role and both had amazing lives that didn't have anything to do with monsters or gods or deserts or dead lovers.
Sakura's heart hurt in a whole new way and she felt the tears leak. She missed her friends. All she wanted was her friends and she knew she could pull through whatever shit the dream threw at her. It wasn't fair that they had taken her phone and disabled the signal to 'protect her.' She felt isolated, and Jugo, Yamato, and Genma were great pals, but she wanted her girlfriends.
Sakura opened her eyes feeling heat on her face and a pounding in her head.
Not her head.
She blinked and looked up at the door that was shaking with each pound. Someone was outside calling out her name, sounding more and more frantic. All the shadows were in different places and the sun was much lower in the sky.
Had she dozed off, or just not realized how long she sat there lost in thought?
"Sakura, open the door!" That was Genma, not Yamato.
"No," she croaked, barely loud enough to be heard. She forced herself to roll over onto her side and then push up off the floor. Her knees were too tired and she wobbled. Standing was hard again.
"Sakura, are you alright? You're not hurting yourself in there?"
Her heart pinched on their concern. "Go away. I'm fine."
"You've been in there for hours." It was Yamato's voice that responded, not Genma's.
"I lost track of time and fell asleep, geez." Sakura was proud of how strong her voice sounded when the rest of her felt like it was going to break apart. She sounded normal. "Don't be babies about it and back off my door. Yall a bunch of perverts."
"I don't believe you," Genma called through the door. "Show me your face at least. I need to see you're alright."
"I don't feel like seeing anyone today," Sakura growled out, hackles rising. It was easier to feel angry than hurt. She didn't like feeling hurt.
"Sakura, we're worried about you, even Jugo," Yamato interrupted, sounding like a softer version of his earlier self. "Something happened. You're being distant with us."
Sakura didn't respond but pulled out the drawer again and reached for something new. There was a male's electric razor that looked so similar to the one she had used when Karin insisted they sport matching undercuts during their first year as friends. Sakura did Karin's cut for her and then chickened out when she saw how sloppy Karin's handiwork was.
She plugged in the razor and turned it on.
"What the hell is she doing?" Yamato hissed, recognizing the sound.
Sakura parted her hair from where it was healthy and long and where it was hacked and short. She used one of the combs to make a straight part down the side of her head all the way to her neck's nape. She then leaned her head to one side and started to buzz down what the scissors couldn't get earlier.
"You better not be doing what I think you're doing. You're too pretty to pull a Britney Spears on us now, Sakura!" Genma yelled through the door.
Sakura smirked at the thought of cutting everything off and stepping out of the room with black paint smeared across the top half of her face. What use did she have for the world's standards on beauty? She was a god killer in a curse constructed to kill all the unworthy.
"Sakura, please, don't be hurting yourself," Yamato called through the door, trying the handle again. Sakura had locked it twice, so even if they picked the lock, the latch would catch and keep her safe….and them out.
"Shut up, I told you I'm not," she snapped, watching herself in the mirrors to make sure her job was as neat as the one on Karin. She had been so proud of that buzz wasn't a reason her own should be any less amazing.
She turned the razor off and ran the water from the sink to wash away the left over hairs. She wiped that side of her head down, pulling off her shirt to stand exposed in front of the sink. With a wet cloth she cleaned her head, her face, her neck and shoulders, her torso, her arms, and other parts of her.
There were still voices on the other side of the door, complaining about how lunch was so long ago and this was new and Danzo would be worried and Jugo would be ….something. Sakura didn't listen hard enough to catch all the words.
On the back of the door were some shirts and an extra bra. She started to pull the one on over her head, and then reached for the shirt with the longest sleeves. It was the only shirt with sleeves at all, and thankful it was enough to cover the eyes and the rings under them. There were no pants and the shirt did nothing to hide the Egyptian sun rays on her neck. It wasn't perfect, but she doubted they would leave if she told them to.
"I'm coming out now," she warned. She undid one lock and paused before undoing the other. "I'm not wearing pants so don't be perverts about it."
There was a scuffle as Genma made a dirty joke and Yamato likely tried to smack him for it.
"Turn around, you ass!"
"Why just me?"
"Cause you're the perverted slut."
"All the more reason to ignore me-it's not anything I haven't seen before."
There was more fighting but Sakura pulled the last lock back and stepped out, pausing to watch the two boys watch her. She saw a reflection of herself in their eyes and watched each expression's shift and change.
"Shit. I take that back," Genma whispered, swallowing slowly, mouth agap.
Sakura didn't leave her room that day, and the boys brought everything she needed to her. When any of the elders asked about her absence they were quick to lie. Not even they knew why, but everyone knew deep down that her new tattoos were a discovery best left uncovered.
"So this is the power of a man god," Sasuke wondered out loud, looking all around him at the different strands of colored light filtering in through the dyed fabrics overhead.
Sakura looked up from the decorated pillow where she lounged to watch the brat prince's blind amazement. She had dreamed up the tent to shade them while they were carried back across the desert atop an elephant large enough to actually be a blue whale with two extra sets of legs.
She flicked a finger and part of the tapestry overhead shifted and melted into colored glass. Sasuke gasped like a child and Sakura had to fight back a snort.
Gaara got up from where he had been sitting and brought with him a studded goblet with swirling peach nectar. He reached for her hand and helped her up before pressing it to her lips. Sakura sipped gratefully, knowing she neither desired nor needed food while in the dream.
In some worlds she was tricked into feeling hunger and imagining want, but as long as she was so self aware, she could go nights on end in the dream without eating or sleeping. Still, she could taste things if she wanted to.
Sasuke side eyed the pair of them before glaring when Gaara moved back to set their shared goblet down.
"If you could do all this on your own without the god tattoos, then why did you risk your life for them?" Sasuke asked, edging closer to the edge of her pillow set.
"They were necessary for something else…" Sakura answered, glancing to Sai and looking for a sign as to how much she could tell this new addition to the party.
Gaara had been mildly upset about Sakura's decision to heal and recover the brat prince, but Sai only laughed and grinned at her, saying something along the lines of how it sounded like something she would do.
"His role will be to try and steal your tattoos," Gaara warned her.
"I know. But he can't help it, and I'll be expecting it this time. I'll be less broken up if I have to kill this actor," she whispered back to him, watching as Sasuke walked off ahead of them.
She might have gone a little overboard in crafting their transportation back to the palace where they would be able to launch a secondary excursion for the storm in the center of the desert where the final Obelisk was hidden. It was so close, Sakura almost couldn't believe it. The last bastard god was defeated and with Gaara she had all she needed to leave this world and win the god trials.
It unnerved her.
"Something bothering you?" Gaara asked, watching Sasuke out of the corner of his eye, still not trusting the brat.
"There are many things bothering me. Talking about such worries will alleviate none of them, I fear," she answered.
"What of the men in your own waking world?" Gaara went on to ask, not caring if Sasuke overheard. Sasuke was the only one of the group that didn't know the world around them was her dream, built up to form a god trial that spanned over two years.
"They're…being supportive as I suspected. They were a bit freaked out about it all, but when I talked to them they didn't push me for more answers or details about my fight." Sakura touched her one shoulder, left exposed as the white sleeves of her dress were clipped in gold bands atop her shoulders to keep her cool. "I didn't show them the newest tats."
"It might have been too much for them to take in at once." Gaara reached over and ran the knuckles of his fingers over where her hair had been buzzed.
"They shouldn't be surprised at this rate. After everything else…"
"Very little follows you into the waking world."
Sakura looked up and almost glared at Gaara, remembering the way her hands shook and body rocked with new tremors and fears. "Everything follows be into the waking world.
"Very little that they can see and believe," he amended, dropping his eyes. "Your chronicler may know, but none will ever understand what you endure apart from another dreamer, and even then I don't think the suffering you've endured could be copied so well."
"What? Not every dreamer takes a lover during their trials?" she joked, knowing full well how many of the diaries had whole chapters filled with smut that made girls and boys blush to read. Madara's exploits in the kingdom of monsters…
Gaara side eyed her, leaning back in his own pillows. "Plenty take lovers in each world, most who chose so chose to take several. That's never been a new thing. But very few have loved their actors so faithfully to hurt so tragically."
"Although," Sai entered their ring of pillows and settled himself down with an easy smile. "I don't think any have shown such pure innocence in their lovers."
"Sai," Sakura growled in warning.
He grinned at her and she remembered how annoying she first found him back in the Kingdom of Man where he was a cryptic guide with a coy smile and a habit of evaporating into thought the moment you needed him. Now he was her dear friend, but he was also a mischief maker when he was idle for too long, as she was slowly discovering.
"I don't mean anything bad by it," he amended, raising both palms up in defense. "It's sweet."
Gaara tried not to, but he couldn't help but look interested and she had to glare at him to make him blink and break eye contact with the Sight of Dejection. Sakura snapped her fingers in front of Sai's face and then pointed at him with a scowl on her own lips.
"Watch it, buddy."
"You don't like your virtue being praised."
"I don't like it being made into a subject for conversation."
Sai shrugged, leaning back into the pillows with an easy smile. "Are you having any issue with your chronicler, then? If I remember correctly, he was once attracted to you or still is. Was it awkward talking about how Madara seduced you in the last Kingdom?"
Sakura summoned a golden dinner plate out of pure thought and swung it hard in his direction. He braced with his hands up, but there was still a echoing clang as he was knocked backwards over a roll of pillows. Sakura turned the golden dinner plate into a sword with a flick of her wrist.
"I can't believe I risked my life for your ungrateful gossipy ass," she huffed. "What is it with you?"
"You don't think it's unfair how the others in this conversation do no contribute their own stories before pulling out your history?" Sasuke asked, walking over in a mask of confidence, thought the hesitation was easy to pick out when he glanced to the sword still in her hand. When she didn't swing for him or bark an accusation the brat prince lowered himself to a cushion across from her.
Sakura dropped the sword and let it flake into glittering sand dust before it hit the floor. "All around I think it is an uncomfortable conversation to have with the present company. I'll indulge myself once I'm back with my girlfriends. No offense, Gaara, but, it's just where I am most comfortable having such a conversation." Sakura glared over her shoulder at Sai. "I'm not apologizing to you because I don't care if I hurt your feelings."
"I thought we were friends." He grinned, sitting up and scooting back over to where he once sat before getting hit in the face by Sakura.
We are," she said. "I'm really surprised with you right now, and not in a good way."
"You forget I'm originally a guide. All guides are tasked with the responsibility of crafting a world and writing a narrative to challenge the dreamer. Some guides make more of an emphasis on setting, others on the narrative, while some may look to the actors and characters most heavily."
"What was your speciality?" Sakura asked, already guessing. She remembered how enamored he was with her library of knowledge from back in the first kingdom.
"Setting, obviously."
Sakura grinned and chuckled. "I knew it."
"The two of you…" Sasuke interjected, watching how Sakura and Sai interacted. "What are you to each other?"
"Sakura's the hero and I am the bard singing her epics," Sai answered quickly, face so neutral anyone would think he was dead serious.
Sakura picked up a pillow and smacked him with it. "You're such a-I have no idea what has gotten into you. It's like you're worse than ever before." She turned back to look at Sasuke. "He's my friend, a good friend. We've known each other a long while and been through a lot together."
"He's not your lover?" Sasuke asked, ducking his head to hide how his ears burned.
Gaara looked up at her, watching her expression as it turned sour and likely remembering the time he asked her the same sort of question.
"I swear to God, I don't want his dick. I don't know how else to phrase it. Friends. Frieeeeeeends." Sakura waved her hands at Sai. "Just friends."
Sasuke was watching her curiously, with an almost embarassed expression. "Do you…like men?"
Sakura felt her face burn as she dropped it into her hands. "I can't believe I am having this conversation right now. Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyy?" She lifted her head and gave him a desperate look. "Why would you ask me that? Just because I don't want Sai's dick? I don't have to want every man's dick do I?"
Behind her Sakura could hear Sai snickering and knew that Gaara's expression was a mask for the amusement that was dancing in his eyes as he watched on. She had spent so many nights in so many different facets of the Obelisk world with so many different actors and guides. After all this, at the very end, she gets stuck on the back of a eight legged elephant crossing the desert with a trio of boys all interested in talking about sexuality. She just killed a god and all they want to talk about is… sex. What had she done to deserve this?
"Don't blame him, it's his script, remember," Sai chuckled, ducking over and sliding into a seat beside her, disrupting the pillows as he moves.
"It's our duty to rise above our programing," Sakura mutters, glaring sideways at Sasuke who looks partly lost but still intrigued. She doesn't want to blame him because she knows he really can't help it, but she hopes that the more she talks about their world being a dream and the longer he is around her, he'll start to wake up and evolve organically.
"It sounds like a game would be more your speed at the moment," Gaara interrupts. "We can talk about such fascinating subjects later if you're more willing, but for now let's play with the dice.
"I'm not sure I have anything to gamble," says Sasuke.
Sakura waves her hand and the space between them rises up as a low table is dreamed into being. The sides are raised so that any dice rolled will not fall off the sides. It reminded Sakura of a severally overpriced gaming table that was custom made for one of her old bosses back in high school. She worked out of his house cleaning and always envied the table.
"I don't play with bets," Sakura grumbled. "It's not worth it."
Sasuke smirked across from her. "I'd say the same thing if I could dream money out of thin air."
"Then should we wager something else?" Gaara asked reaching behind him for the win he had left alone until now. Sakura held out her hand to him and he gifted her the goblet of peach nectar she had been sipping from earlier.
"What do I have to fear losing?" Sakura asked over the rim of her cup.
"Secrets, confessions, stories? If you don't feel like answering questions that's fine, but maybe it would be easier if you won them from others?"
Sakura touched the table and four different black boxes grew out of the wood before tipping over to spill their dice. Each player sat in front of a set of six playing dice, each with six sides. Sakura made each se differently colored. Gaara had crimson dice with speckled with flecks of gold and gold numbers, Sasuke's dice was black with scarlet numbers, Sai's set was blue with veins of copper streaked throughout in addition to the coper numbers. Sakura's own dice set was a teal green with gold numbers.
"There are still things I don't want to answer and I'll not confess to anything I don't want to."
"Innocent questions, then," Sai interjected. "What's your favorite color, what do you like to eat, what's your favorite time of day….those sort of questions. You'd feel comfortable with those, wouldn't you?"
Sakura reached for her dice and scooped them back into the black velvet cup. "Fine. The game is Farkle. First to five thousand points gets to ask a question. We'll play as many rounds as you want."
Sakura waved her hand again and the point system for roles as well as the rules burned up through the velvet at the base of the table. Sasuke looked over the rules and learned them along with Gaara, but Sai smiled easily, likely already knowing about the game from Sakura's memories.
"I'll warn you, I don't think I'll lose first," she said.
"It's a game of luck, don't get too confident," Sasuke chastised playfully, collecting his own dice with a grin other girls might think attractive.
Somehow it ended with Sasuke dressed as Dr. Strange and Gaara as an assassin from the Assassins Creed games. Sakura was dressed in a card capturing outfit from the Card Capture Sakura series, and Sai was Zuko the fire prince from the Avatar the Last Airbender cartoon series. It was the oddest of costume combinations and Sakura didn't know how the dice game dissolved into bouts of flash dress up, but it might have had something to do with all the peach nectar and the opportunity to actually enjoy some aspect of the dreadful dream. For a few hours Sakura could forget about gods and curses and dead lovers.
Sai helped dream up the costumes, but Sakura was the one with the background in nerd so she was the lead fashion designer while he supported her crazy off the wall ideas. Sasuke actually seemed thrilled with the game and Gaara was just happy to see her happy.
"I want to be the metal man again," Sasuke insisted, still playing with his red cape so that it flapped behind him as he turned and twisted.
The metal man was a cyborg that Sakura had used Genos from One Punch Man as a reference for. Sasuke's body wasn't altered, but the surface of his skin turned metal and different facets of his body would open up when he moved. Sakura thought the design interesting enough to try on the first willing participant, and Sasuke had lost with the lowest score so she didn't even bother asking his permission. Thankfully, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Sakura waved her hand and it was done in less than an eye's blink.
"You don't get tired, even after all this?" Sasuke asked her, testing out his metal fingers.
Sakura shook her head and reached for a bread stick, soft as any freshly baked loaf and coated in a butter garlic spread. "Not here, and not anymore."
"Where else is there but here?"Sasuke asked, still standing with his metal arms waving to open the different gun compartments that Sakura did not stock with actual ammunition.
"I walk between two worlds, this one and the one I was born into. This world is my dream, which is why I am master of it and can do as I do. Elsewhere I am just as mortal as anyone else and a lot less fed."
"They're feeding you, though," Gaara asked, turning to her with a undercurrent of concern in his tone. "You said those friends of yours were bringing you food."
"I'm fine. I have all the food I could want. More than my stomach could hold, which is not how I started out, mind you. I'm being spoiled where I am right now." Sakura held the breadstick just in front of her lips. "It's keeping it down that's the issue."
"Why?"
Sakura looked up at Sasuke who was still standing and staring down at her while she longed among the pillows. He seemed younger than when she first met him and pegged him as a brat prince playboy. The playboy angle didn't work on her and he seemed to have dropped it completely. Being a brat didn't get him anywhere either. It was interesting getting to see a new layer to his character and even Gaara admitted that this was the most interesting Sasuke he's seen, since in the few previous dreams when Sasuke is employed he's killed right away or taken up on those bedroom adventures, regardless of orientation.
"He's following a script, regardless of orientation," Sai whispered into her ear, sobering her.
That was when Sakura dressed Sasuke up as a Spartan from the Halo games where she couldn't see his face.
"Why what?" Sakura parroted, being purposefully obtuse.
"Why can't you keep food down in the other world if you can dream bread out of nothing in this world?"
"That's a good question. If I find out the answer I'll let you know, but the leading theory is that I'm a wreck of a person that's far sloppier and messier than the version of myself you see here."
Sasuke's lip curled and she was reminded of all the times he said bratty things. "Are you really fat in the other world, or ugly?"
She bit into her bread with a bored look. "The ugliest. I have worts on top of my worts, I'm cross eyed with gray hair and fuzz on my chin."
"You should have made him win for an answer to that question," Gaara grumbled. "There are limits to how rude you can be."
"And obviously I've not reacted them if I'm still here," Sasuke shot back with an edge of snark. He grinned slyly and Gaara flinched at the sight of such a devious expression.
"It's not because of your looks, I'll tell you that right now before your ego gets too inflated," Sakura cut in, delighting far too much in the way Sasuke reacted, as if she guessed exactly what he had been thinking when he smiled so slyly in the first place. "I've seen prettier boys that you, Sasuke. Don't get too full of yourself."
"I wasn't…I-I never said anything like that." He glanced between the others seat around the gaming table and started to slowly sit. "And I don't believe you, for the record. I'm very pretty, everyone tells me so."
Sakura looked over at him and smiled like a mother humoring her delusion child. "Sure, honey."
Sasuke bristled at her tone and huffed. "Well, who would you consider pretty?"
She thought of Sasori and hurt all over, but didn't let it show on her face. Instead, she reached for the dice in front of her. "Beat me and maybe I'll show you."
It took two blissfully relaxing days on the back of an enchanted elephant to get back to the capital where Gaara discovered Deidara's mysterious disappearance as well as a number of other lose ends being taken care of. Sasuke was thought to be still on business and no one questioned it when Gaara led a hooded figure into his palace along with known friends Sakura and Sai.
Gaara had summoned his chief cartographer to work with Sai in drawing up a map that would get them to the desert at the center of the world, and the Obelisk that would end all of Sakura's nightmares.
While business is being seen to by the greater pharaoh Sasuke teaches her how to play a game called Hounds and Jackles using a board on rests on four carved legs. Among the playing pieces there are five pins with hounds' heads and five with jackals' heads. The board is shaped like an axe-blade, and there are 58 holes in the upper surface with an incised palm tree topped by a shen sign in the center. The aim of the game is to dominate the Jackles if you are a hound, or vise versa, almost like checkers, but with less pieces.
It takes an additional day for travel plans to be finalized with the caravan traders who know the desert and her whims better than anyone else. It's vital Gaara get all this information from all these sources before they even think of setting out.
Sakura suspects Gaara is dragging his feet for more time with her, but doesn't raise issue with it because she wanted to be selfish too. She wanted the days of rest before another battle.
Still, she couldn't believe in the respite. She couldn't calm herself to not duck into shadows and hold her breath while palace guards pass by. Every night when she entered the dream she braced for an attack or an adventure, but was met by neither.
Sai was the one that found her in the water gardens, sitting on a stone looking out at the Nile.
"I don't trust this dreadful world," she told Sai.
Sakura dreamed up her bone sword and turned it over to study the new designs etched into the sheath while drawing the blad out slowly. There were new designs that looked like an Eagle holding the sun in his claws. She didn't understand it.
"After all the hurt you've endured don't you think it is time this world cut you a break?" Sai asked her after she admitted her fears.
Sakura slid the blade back and it caught in the sheath with a ringing snap.
"No.'
"Blood ends and blood begins.
Blood ends and light begins.
We are broken dams.
We are goddamn broken.
We are God: dams broken."
Jeremy Radin, from "With These Hands"
AN:/ Rush this out. I'm in China teaching for two weeks, so I'll try to update, but i don't know how easy that will be. Take this as an airport-las minute- offering. :) ENJOY!
AN2: I rushed to get this out and messed it up-as per usual. I've re-uploaded it with the ending that was originally intended. (Assassins in the real world.) Sorry for the late update. :(
If you can, please leave me a review to let me know you're still on board with the story and still find it interesting. I love to hear back from you and know my work is reaching people. Thank you!
Side Note: I also have a A03 account where I'll begin to start uploading stuff *coughsmutcough* (I'm super lazy) that usually shows up on my tumblr... my A03 handle is Vesperchan and of course my tumblr id is vesperlionheart in case you wanted to know.