ZERO / BLEACH / TWIST (here) / REVERSE / DYE / RED
Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. — Oscar Wilde
The bells were ringing. Ringing. Clanging so noisily in the tower.
She dreaded hearing those bells because it meant the beginning of another long day.
But as Sakura blinked awake, she realized what an odd thought that was.
The only clocktower in the city was an ancient thing with huge neon green hands that could be seen from almost any window. If you waved your hand in front of your face, the numbers on the clock blurred to reveal the weather and the times for the sunrise and sunset. Wave again to see the times for moonrise and moonset. It was a clever little spell that activated for each person the moment they set foot within city limits.
There were no bells.
So just what had she imagined hearing?
As she lay there, a memory came to her.
"It's illusion magic," Sakura had guessed one night as she sat at the kitchen table. This was years ago. She knew from the way Sasuke's hair had gotten too long. The one time he was convinced that super long hair looked good on him. (He was definitely copying Itachi, but no one dared to point that out to him.)
"It's conjuration. It's making something appear," Sasuke countered, swirling his spoon around in the remnants of his cereal milk. A few soggy bits of wheat drifted around with the motion.
They both looked to Madara, who just smiled. He gestured to Itachi sitting across from him. Shisui was away on one of his trips at the time.
"What's the answer, Itachi?" Madara asked.
When both Sasuke and Sakura looked to him, Itachi chuckled.
"Transmutation," he replied.
"What?"
"How?"
"The clock tower runs on electricity. The spell converts the energy from the electricity into light and heat."
Sasuke wrinkled his nose. "How is that any different from regular electricity?"
Itachi raised his eyebrows. "Good question. No cogs. Just a few wires and some spells. The tower's mostly hollow."
It was Sakura's turn to wrinkle her nose. "That's…. Complicated for no reason," she mused. And as her eyes fell on someone who loved to enchant things in complicated ways for no reason, her face lit up.
"Did you come up with that?" asked Sakura.
The corner of Madara's mouth curled up in a feline smirk.
"Took Shisui ages to figure that out. Smart," he replied before he took a sip from his mug.
There were lots of strange things about the city that traced their roots back to Madara. The streetlights powered by fire magic. The expansion charm on city buses that allowed more people to fit on each vehicle than seemed possible.
And in the present, she realized.
"There used to be a bell. Not anymore," she said out loud.
She didn't know why that mattered. But it felt important to say in the moment.
By the time she rolled out of bed, Madara was already shuffling around downstairs. She could hear the sink running. The refrigerator door opening and closing.
Gaara had texted her good morning.
He had been this attentive in her dreams too.
She texted him back. And then she tossed her phone aside to stretch her arms over her head.
"I'm borrowing your scrying bones!" she yelled as she crossed the hall. Madara grunted something that sounded affirmative.
The bones felt cool to the touch as she scooped them out of the pouch. She scattered them across the rug in her room. When she channeled magic into them, she could feel the bones begin to hum. The cracks began to light up gold, the whispers beginning to creep into her ears.
Beware of the dreams that linger.
Do not give your heart away.
It wasn't unusual for scrying bones to give multiple pieces of information. It was unusual for those pieces to be so cryptic, however.
She ran her hand over the bones one more time. Her fingertips tingled.
Pity the child who trusts the keyless lock.
When she frowned, the scrying bones repeated the warning.
Pity the child who trusts the keyless lock.
Extremely cryptic. Bordering on unhelpful.
She sat on the rug, staring at the bones for a while.
But then another text arrived from Gaara, distracting her. She swept the bones back into the soft pouch. They almost seemed to cling to her- like they were reluctant to part from her. She peered down at the bones. And then she reached inside to pluck one of the bones from the pile. A rib. Less noticeable if it was missing since there were 23 others rattling around inside. She slipped it into the drop drawer of her dresser before she returned the pouch to Madara's nightstand.
Madara yelled from downstairs asking if they were out of marmalade.
A laugh bubbled up her throat as she almost yelled back that he didn't even like marmalade.
She stopped herself.
No, Madara loved marmalade. He ate it with all of his toast when possible. Where had that bizarre and obviously wrong thought come from then? Sakura blinked, shaking her head as she made her way downstairs to help him dig through the pantry.
She didn't see much of Madara in the next few weeks. She wasn't avoiding him on purpose. But some small part of her was relieved for an excuse not to have to see him so often. She kept imagining his blood spilling over her, too warm, whenever he squeezed her in a hug or patted her on the back. It made it hard for her to meet his eyes for too long. And if at all possible, she wanted to avoid him catching on that something was up.
She regretted telling him everything. The magic circle still buzzing purple. A body sprawled across the runes. And Madara looking too calm, as if the blood wasn't spreading until it wet the bottoms of his shoes.
She was glad she decided to keep quiet this time. Shisui wouldn't disappear into thin air. Itachi and Sasuke were still alive.
And Gaara was easy to talk to. That was why she had liked him in the first place.
He liked calling more than texting. He tended to stay up late like her. They went to see a movie. Another time, they walked in the park.
November turned to December. Snow began to flutter down onto the city. As the white flakes dotted the asphalt, Sakura leaned against the counter in Gaara's tiny studio apartment. One of the tiles on the floor was cracked, like someone had dropped something from the counter. She ran her heel over the circular indent in the ceramic.
"It's hot," Gaara warned.
Sakura turned her gaze back to him. He poured from the electric kettle. There were two mismatched mugs filled with instant coffee. Steam curled into the air as he filled both the cups.
"Sorry. I haven't had a chance to get groceries in a while," Gaara said, pushing one of the cups towards her. Sakura summoned a spoon from thin air and used it to mix her drink first, then his. She dropped the spoon into the sink, but it never clattered. Just dissolved into smoke. She smiled at him as she lifted the mug with both hands.
"That's alright. I'm not picky about my caffeine," she assured him. She took a careful sip of the coffee before she glanced around.
Gaara's apartment looked… bare, somehow. There were shoes and clothes. A few decorations were scattered around. There was even a poster up on the wall of some vintage movie. But despite those little things, it felt a little cold.
"It's really coming down now," Gaara observed.
Sakura followed his line of sight to the window over the sink. The streetlights were beginning to blink on. There were still people running around outside as the storm began to pick up.
"I'll call you a cab?" Gaara offered. He patted his pants until he found his phone in his back pocket.
"Can I sleep on the couch?"
Gaara's hands slipped. He dropped his phone. It fell face-down on the tile.
Sakura laughed a little. "Sorry. I made you uncomfortable. I'll go before it gets bad." She pushed her mug away. It was still steaming as she grabbed her phone and keys off the counter.
In a way, she was glad. In her visions, she had never crossed that line with him either. She had been so consumed with her research. And his awkward little blushes and stutters had made her think that it would be better to take things slow. It had felt like they had all the time in the world.
As she reached for her coat where she had draped it over the back of the sofa, Sakura felt Gaara close his hand around her forearm.
"There's no food in my fridge. We should order dinner before they stop delivering," he said, quietly.
You're garbage, Sakura thought to herself later. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Gaara slept on the sofa. His back was to her. There was a blanket draped over him, but he couldn't have been too comfortable. But she knew why he endured it.
Knew it from the way his eyes lit up when she walked into a room. Or how he agreed too quickly to each of her comments.
It was cruel to exploit his little puppy love like this. She knew there were other ways to go about this. But what her recent experiences- visions- whatever- had taught her was that honesty might not be the best option.
Sakura shifted a little. Gaara's breathing was steady. She slipped out of bed, shivering when her feet touched the floor.
A quick spell summoned a dim light to her fingertips. She glanced around the apartment. There didn't seem to be much to snoop through. There were some books and papers on his coffee table, though they had been pushed to the side to make room for their paper containers of noodles and steaming dumplings. Sakura plucked one of the papers out of the mess to squint at it. It looked like an invoice for some clothes he had ordered online. She set it back down where she had found it.
When Gaara woke in the morning, it was to Sakura shaking his shoulder. He squinted, twisting around to look at her.
"Hey. I need to get going. Just wanted to say thank you for letting me crash here," she whispered. She spoke quickly, before he could fully wake up and get his bearings about him.
He grunted something. Cleared his throat. Tried to speak again. "Yeah. No problem. Uh. Do you want breakfast or something?" Gaara sat up, swaying a little. He rubbed the side of his neck, wincing at the stiffness he probably felt there.
Sakura pulled on her coat. She flipped her hair over the collar.
"I'm running a little late. Next time," she replied.
He looked disappointed. She felt a twinge of regret again. So she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. She had only done so a handful of times. Mostly because it filled her with the same guilt that welled up now. He might have called her name as she headed out the door. She pretended not to hear him.
He had some kind of connection to Madara. There was no other reason for him to end up dead in her house. Twice.
The most obvious solution was to ask Madara outright. He never avoided her questions. But another part of her remembered Madara's hand coated in blood. As if it had stabbed directly through someone. Even if all her other visions were true and that wasn't, she didn't exactly feel comfortable asking him just yet.
Instead, she pretended to be working on her thesis and headed to the Senju Institute.
She dropped by the Department of Abjuration to check her mailbox. Nothing too interesting. She chatted with the secretaries for a minute, laughing and smiling in all the right places before she headed to the library.
Sakura scoured the database. There were hundreds of papers written by Madara. And even more papers that referenced or credited him. Not a single one also included Gaara's name somewhere in the study. That was frustrating. She managed to find a few books that caught her interest and brought them back to her small office in the Department of Abjuration.
She was unsurprised when there was a knock on the open door a few hours later. Sakura looked up from her book, slipping her thumb between the pages to mark her spot.
"Headmaster."
"Dry as always. You sound more and more like him with every day."
She set her magnifying glass aside with a scowl.
"See? He does that too," Hashirama added with a chuckle. He lingered in the doorway, looking around her narrow office that she shared with another grad student. When his eyes fell on the newest books on her desk, his expression changed.
"Thinking about changing your thesis?"
Divination: An Exploration of Foresight
Through the Eyes of Fate
Advanced Divination and Enchantment of Visions
There were a few others, but the spines were obscured under other papers and scraps ripped from her notebook.
When it was clear that she wasn't going to rise to his bait, Hashirama sighed. The headmaster was forever trying to rope her into a conversation. Madara assured her that it was fine to ignore him. So she often did.
"Fine. I wanted to let you know that those spell books you requested last month are finally here," he informed her. And then he followed her pointing finger. On the opposite end of her desk from the divination books were the texts on dreams she had specially ordered from another university several cities away.
"Oh… you already got them?"
She had known exactly where those books would be waiting for her. On the silver cart in the library. Labelled with her name and her department.
"I saw them when I visited the library this morning. Seemed like a waste not to grab them too," Sakura replied.
Hashirama nodded. Then his expression brightened as he clasped his hands together. "How goes the research?"
The last time he had asked, she had demonstrated. Just a little something to show off.
She was tired today. Sakura just shrugged. "Slowly. But it goes," she said as vaguely as possible.
Hashirama just laughed, waving his hand. "Alright. I get the hint. I'll get out of your hair," he conceded.
"Thank you," Sakura replied. She reopened her book, about to return to her reading. But she stopped herself.
"Headmaster," she found herself calling out. The man braced his hands against the doorway, still smiling. He arched an eyebrow at her.
When she lifted her chin, Sakura looked him straight in the eye. Whatever expression she had on her face made Hashirama drop his smile altogether.
"What happened to the bell in the clocktower?"
His look of confusion seemed genuine enough.
"There's never been any bell. The tower's always been hollow," he told her. And then he tilted his head a little. "Perhaps you're remembering another city. Or… " The smile returned to Hashirama's face. "Dreams can get confusing. Sometimes I think I've already done my laundry and wake up to find that it was only a dream." He laughed a little.
Sakura forced a smile onto her lips.
An unpleasant sensation prickled down her spine. Dread, she realized a heartbeat later.
Something was wrong.
Hashirama's smile sharpened.
"You should be careful not to let your dreams linger when you're awake, Sakura," he then warned her.
Sakura kept the bizarre conversation to herself when she left the campus not too long after. Goosebumps had erupted up and down her arms when the headmaster had uttered that final statement. It wasn't quite identical. But it was similar enough to the scrying bones' message.
In the world of divination, there were very few rules. One of the most important was that coincidence was the excuse of a lazy diviner. Or an incompetent one. Hashirama considered her- his eyes unreadable.
Sakura mulled over the bizarre conversation as she walked into the dream shop just before noon.
Shisui scrutinized her from the counter. His eyes narrowed. He turned to say something to Itachi. She ignored the both of them as she tossed her coat aside and headed into the break room to pour a cup of coffee.
Her cousins blocked her when she tried to step out of the break room.
"I'll pour hot coffee on you," she warned them.
"You'd never waste coffee like that," Shisui called her bluff immediately.
"Try me," she growled, trying to move past them. Shisui folded his arms across his chest.
Itachi didn't look nearly so stern. "You've been acting strange lately. We just wanted to make sure you're alright," he said. It was weird how his voice suddenly made the corners of her eyes sting.
Shisui's face softened. "Yeah. Like, even if you can't talk to Uncle, we're here," he chimed in. And then he offered an arm to her. Sakura used the hand that wasn't holding the coffee to hug him. He squeezed her just the right amount. Hugs from Shisui were the best.
"Except money. I'm broke. Can't let you borrow anything," Shisui then amended, squeezing her a little closer. Sakura laughed, slapping at his back a few times. As she twisted in his arm to hit him again, she felt Itachi grab her shoulder. Hard.
"Ow!" Sakura complained.
At the same time, Shisui protested. "What the heck, man? You don't even like hugging. Wait your turn."
Itachi swept Sakura's hair off the back of her neck. He stared. It was bizarre enough that Shisui released her to get a look at whatever it was too.
"Oh. When did you get a tattoo?" Shisui wondered.
"A what?" Sakura retorted. She squirmed when Itachi ran his thumb over the back of her neck. It felt… odd. Tingly, maybe?
"This… isn't a tattoo," mused Itachi. He was gentler this time as he put his hand on Sakura's shoulder again. She turned to face him. She put her palm over the place he had just touched.
"It's a contract," he then clarified. His eyes searched hers as he asked: "Sakura, have you made a deal with someone or… something?"
Sakura shook her head.
Itachi hissed out a long sigh. He ran a hand through his hair. His gaze wandered around as he thought. Shisui, however, seemed to come to a decision much faster. He cupped a hand around his mouth.
"Sasuke!" he shouted.
There was a long pause. And then a door slammed somewhere upstairs. Footsteps clomped down until Sasuke's face appeared at the top of the staircase. He was scowling.
"I'm finishing up with a client," Sasuke hissed.
"Don't care. Wrap it up. We're closing for the day," Shisui decided.
"To do what?" Sasuke demanded.
"To figure out why the fuck Sakura has a demon contract on the back of her neck. Now hurry up, smartass," Shisui snapped in response.
Sasuke paled. His stare lingered on Sakura for another moment before he ran back upstairs.