ZERO / BLEACH / TWIST / REVERSE / DYE (here) / RED
This is why my betrayal was so terrible. Because you believed me incapable of hurting you, and yet I did. -Chloe Gong
No one noticed when she stole the scrying bones again.
It made her brave. To think that if she made the wrong move that none of this would matter anyway. Like letting the waves break over a sandcastle and smash it to pieces in the cold current.
She swapped the entire set out this time. Replacing them with the ones Madara had gifted her many years ago. As she slipped into her room across the hall, they thrummed in her pocket. She cast a ward to silence and guard.
When she scattered the bones across her rug, one of the ribs glowed a soft shade of yellow. She knew it was the one that had burned her.
"Any advice?" she asked as she channeled magic into the bones.
Wisps rose from the blackened cracks. Sakura leaned in to listen to the murmurs.
They were laughing and whispering, as if sharing some bit of delightful gossip. If she really concentrated, she could almost hear two distinct sets of voices going back and forth.
She could only make out bits and pieces.
Beware
Lock
Heart
Break
When she gave the bones a gentle nudge with more energy, they seemed groggy. Sakura sighed as she let her hands fall into her lap.
Instead, she took in a deep breath to push the magic out from her stomach, through her arms, and out her fingertips. Fine threads like spiderwebs wove together to form a shield. As delicate as lace. She let it settle over the scrying bones. Watched the fabric of the shield mold to each bump and curve of the bones.
She tugged, testing the tension of each individual thread of the shield.
It really did take some getting used to.
She tugged a little harder. The threads of the shield recoiled, snapping back like a rubber band pulled too tight. The pain recoiled up her fingers and wrists. She snatched them away from the bones, rubbing them together.
"Ouch. Be nice," she grumbled.
Sorry.
She froze. She hadn't been expecting a reply.
Broken.
"Are you talking about me? I'm broken?" she asked out loud.
The silence that answered was hurtful, somehow.
That night, she began to sleep with the scrying bones tucked in the crook of her elbow. Her dreams exploded in garish colors. The reds were too red. The shadows were too dark. And the dream world began to twist in ways she was unaccustomed to. The hallway of the dream broke off into different sections like the branches of an old tree. Shades and glimmers darted along the floors, giggling in almost-decipherable language.
As she took a step toward her door, the floor disappeared beneath her heel. She plunged a thousand feet down into darkness. There wasn't even enough time for a scream to leave her mouth.
Because suddenly she was sitting on a solid surface.
A fire crackled in the far corner, casting an orange glow across the floor. The windows were frosty around the edges. It was snowing outside.
As she looked around, she realized that she was inside some sort of hut. Cramped. Dried plants hanging from the rafters. Dusty glass bottles lined the many shelves squeezed into the space.
A log popped inside the fireplace. It made her jump a little.
And something else by the fireplace jolted too. A pile of fabric she hadn't noticed before stirred.
She didn't quite understand what she was looking at as the words "pitiful child" slipped past her lips.
Yellow eyes opened and found her. Its narrow pupils grew round.
"You're not real," the creature replied in a voice that wasn't quite human. Something about it felt wrong. But it still filled her with a pang of longing. If she could, she wanted to reach out to wrap her arms around this poor thing. To hug him close. To feel his warmth curled up against her heart.
That's where he lives anyway.
She felt a sharp pain in her side- in the same place as always. She didn't have to look down to know that she was bleeding again.
The creature's head tilted. As it opened its mouth to say something else, the little hut with its odd inhabitant blurred away.
The bottoms of her feet were cold now. Which was wrong. There was no true feeling in dreams. No hot. No cold. No true pain or pleasure.
But the bottoms of her feet stung against the bitter chill. She looked down at them. They were filthy, stained black and leaving dirt-crusted tracks in the snow as she walked.
"I'm hungry," she heard herself say.
"Me too."
He sounded more like himself. That was good.
The thought crossed her mind before she could wonder who he was. And when she did wonder, part of her laughed at the silly notion. Of course she knew who he was.
"Will the next town be safe?" she wondered.
Something about those words stung. Like she was asking a question she already knew the answer to.
They crunched through the snow a while longer.
"Doesn't matter," he finally answered. Like he had been considering how to answer for all that time.
"Doesn't matter?"
When she glanced over at him, he was staring straight ahead. Refusing to meet her eyes.
"Yeah. Doesn't matter. I've got your back. You've got mine. We don't need anyone else," he explained.
It was only then that he met her eyes.
"Right?"
Hunger twisted her stomach into knots. But that still made her smile. He answered her with a grin of his too-sharp teeth.
"Right," she agreed.
When she opened her eyes, her own face was staring down at her. Close enough to touch.
"So close," the woman beneath the dream whispered.
"I'm scared. What am I supposed to do next?" Sakura responded, reaching out toward her.
The woman drew in a sharp breath. Eyes widening.
"Pity the child who trusts the keyless lock," was all the woman said before blood began to gush from her side. When Sakura looked down, she saw that she was bleeding from the same place.
Sakura woke with a start. She was shivering. Her covers had pooled around her legs during the night. Her body was cold and hot all at once. Her shirt was damp, like she had been sweating. She sat up in bed. The same sensation from her dream pulled at her right side.
She would have screamed. If this hadn't happened to her before. But it had. And she remembered how Madara had come running as soon as she called out to him.
Mashing her lips together, Sakura pressed her hand to the pain. Even in the darkness, she saw that her hand came away wet and dark. It was running down from her rib, too cool for it to really feel like blood.
She had always struggled with healing magic. It was like the magic particles repelled one another whenever she tried to get them to collide in a healing spell. Madara could patch this up in a few moments. But then she would have to answer questions about what was going on. And she knew that mumbling some half-truths wouldn't be enough to satisfy him when there was a hole in her side.
Sakura pushed down harder on the wound as she eased herself out of bed. A few drops of blood hit the floor as she moved. She took long, slow breaths as she made her way out of her room and down the hall to her the bathroom. She shut the door as quietly as she could before she flicked on the light.
There were always water spirits flitting in and out of the pipes here.
When Sakura peered into the tub, there was already one lounging inside
"You're hurt," the spirit gasped. Its silvery wings thrummed as they lifted her out of the tub.
"I'm sorry to bother you. Could I get some help?" Sakura requested. Technically, all the spirits in the house were bound to Madara, not to her. But the spirits had never denied her requests before. And even now, the water spirit didn't hesitate to fly up to her. It rested tiny hands on her side.
"Was I elsewhere?" Sakura asked as the spirit's magic weaved through her torn skin.
The spirit was a lower level one. It didn't have a clearly defined face. But Sakura could feel the spirit examining her. The hum of magic intensified against her skin until it almost began to hurt. A sensation like static filled her ears; she could almost taste it against the roof of her mouth.
"Yes," the spirit answered after a moment. The magic eased.
Sakura didn't know what to say in response to that. She closed her eyes to let the spirit work.
But as her eyes closed, she thought she saw a flicker of something in the shadows. If she stared hard through her eyelids, she could almost see the silhouette of something that looked human. Red dripping from its blurred mouth.
Sakura gasped.
The spirit held up both its hand in front of its body.
"Did I hurt you?" It asked.
"…No. I'm fine," Sakura replied, forcing herself to smile. She pulled up the hem of her stained shirt. She couldn't even tell where she had been injured in the first place.
"Thank you," she then added.
The silvery-blue spirit glowed a shade brighter.
"We're glad to help you. We've all been so worried about you," the spirit replied.
"We?" Sakura repeated. And then she glanced around the room. Then she remembered the dozens of elemental spirits who lived in the water and gas pipes. Who lingered in the refrigerator and sometimes played pranks by turning the oranges green and the blueberries orange.
"Oh. Well… thank you."
The spirit landed on Sakura's knee. It walked up to put both her tiny hands on top of Sakura's. It looked like it wanted to say something else. But then it shook its head. It gave Sakura's hands a tiny squeeze before it disappeared in a puff of magic dust. Purple and blue sparkles lingered on Sakura's skin before melting away like snow.
It felt weird to go back to bed just like that.
She left a note for Madara before she slipped out the front door. It was too late (or maybe too early) for anyone else to be out. Sakura regretted stepping out in such a light jacket. But by the time the cold really hit her, she was already halfway to the subway station. She cast a warming charm over her arms and legs as she hurried down the street.
Getting to the Senju Institute was practically muscle memory by now. The doors to the administrative building were locked at this time. But Sakura presented her ID card to the door. A red rune flashed across the plastic card. There was a pause before the lock clicked open. Strictly speaking, she wasn't really supposed to have something like this. Tobirama had handed it to her with a stern warning not to let anyone else know that she had this.
"If you do get caught-"
"I won't."
"- then you say it's because you need it to work on your thesis," Tobirama said, speaking right over her like he hadn't even heard her.
As she walked down the darkened hallways, a few lights flickered on to light the way. Enough that she wouldn't trip over her own feet, at least.
When she arrived at the headmaster's office, the door was already ajar. She knocked anyway.
"Come in."
"Isn't this poor security protocol?" Sakura asked as she nudged the door open a little wider.
"You sound more and more like him every day," scoffed Hashirama. He put his reading down and gestured to the chair in front of his desk. He hadn't aged a single day since she had first met him.
When Sakura cast a wary look around the room, Hashirama sighed even louder.
"You're really just like him. I won't bite," he informed her.
Sakura bit her lip as she took a seat.
"The dream world. How do you… access it? It's different for you, right?" she asked. She rubbed her palms against her thighs, just to give her nervous hands something to do. She looked up when she heard the tinkle of plates and spoons knocking together.
Hashirama gave a loose wave of his hand to conjure liquid into the cups. Cookies appeared on the plates as everything settled on the desk between them. Steam danced above the cups. Sakura wrinkled her nose when she saw that it was tea. She touched the tip of her finger to the side of the cup to analyze the composition of the drink. She observed the way the molecules linked together, paused to examine the way the tiny, tiny solids were dissolved into the water. She gathered magic to the tip of her finger to nudge the molecules in another pattern. Then, she rubbed her thumb and pointer finger together with her other hand, coaxing the droplets in the air to condense into something else. The red liquid in her cup turned dark before a splash of white spilled into the cup.
"Cream?" asked Hashirama.
"Oat milk," Sakura corrected.
The magic fizzled out on her fingertips as she reached for the hot cup of coffee with both hands. She took a sip.
"Interesting. You don't summon a replacement. You actually rearrange the elements into something else," Hashirama observed, his jaw cupped in one hand. Sakura raised her eyebrows at him without glancing up from her coffee.
"And to answer your question, I assume that you're asking me about the appearance, not the method?"
Sakura nodded. She kept her hands wrapped around the drink.
"I see a tunnel. The kind that trains go through," Hashirama told her.
Sakura frowned.
"No door."
"No door," Hashirama confirmed.
Sakura met his eyes. He didn't avoid her gaze. He raised his eyebrows at her.
"Care to provide any context?" he asked.
Sakura's mouth twisted to one side. She peered down into her coffee for another moment before she decided to give in.
"Scrying bones have been telling me to 'pity the child who trusts the keyless lock'. And some other things too. But that's the thing that's been standing out the most," she confessed.
Hashirama's eyebrows rose even higher.
"So your mind immediately went to the dream world?"
She nodded.
"I see a big door. It's got a lock, but it opens without a key. So I've never really thought about it until now," she explained. And then, she added, "But it's the door to the dreaming itself. Everyone's individual dreams don't have locks."
Hashirama tilted his head one way, then the other. "Hm… it certainly is strange. I've personally never encountered anything like that. And it sounds like a riddle of some sort. That's not really my forte. You might want to ask my brother."
When Sakura found Tobirama later that day, he snorted. It was the end of the semester and his desk was covered in ungraded exams. When she reached for one, Tobirama didn't stop her.
"My brother must think that I'm some sort of genius if he thinks I can answer that question," Tobirama grumbled. He pushed over a pen to Sakura and she used it to mark errors on the magic circle a student had drawn. The runes were in the wrong order.
"So you don't know either," Sakura guessed.
Tobirama shot her a look before he went back to slashing his pen across mistakes.
"I've never been a big scrying bone person. But from my experience, they're not the best at giving straightforward answers." He paused, wrinkled his nose, then scribbled down a comment on the corner of the exam. His eyes flickered back up to her again.
"So unfortunately, either it's a metaphor, or it's a literal lock. And you're either right that it's important, or it's nothing," he concluded.
"That's so unhelpful," she criticized.
The corners of his eyes crinkled a little. "Such is the nature of dream magic. We might be considered a city that specializes in dreams, but that's not saying much," Tobirama agreed.
That reminded Sakura of something that she had heard once.
People know more about space than they do the ocean.
"Dreams are a lot like the ocean, huh," she mused.
Tobirama rested his chin on the back of his hand. He let out a long, loud sigh. "Unfortunately." And then he let out an even louder sigh when he looked down at the exam in front of him.
Sakura fiddled with the pen as she took in the information- or the lack thereof. "I…" She stopped herself.
Tobirama's eyes locked on her now. He didn't say anything.
Madara had always cautioned her against spending too much time with the headmaster and his brother. But now, she wasn't sure which parts of Madara's teachings to trust and to doubt. Would it even matter if, like all the other times, she woke from a nightmare to find that none of this had happened at all?
Sakura clenched his fist around the pen.
"I saw the woman… beneath the dream…" She picked her words carefully.
"The one who looks like you?" Tobirama asked.
Sakura couldn't help but place her hand over her side.
"I… yeah. She was bleeding in my dream and I woke up hurt in the same place," Sakura confessed.
Tobirama's face was frozen for a moment. And then his eyes began darting back and forth, mouth moving soundlessly as a million thoughts began bouncing around inside his head. Suddenly, he was frowning.
"Has this happened before?" He demanded.
Sakura nodded. "Once. In another…loop, I guess."
Tobirama shuffled through some of the mess on his desk. He yanked a piece of paper from a pile and scribbled down something on the back of it.
"Is it-"
"I don't know. But I'll find out whatever I can for you," he promised.
Madara texted her when he woke up and found her note.
Hard to see your face lately. Don't work too hard.
Sakura's thumbs hovered above her phone. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. So many things she wanted to say. In the end, she was a coward so all she could type back was:
Sorry. I'll be careful.
On her way to the dream shop, her phone buzzed again. It was Madara.
Didn't say it to make you apologize. Always proud of you, kid.
She didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't.
The next time she dreamt, she didn't enter the corridor right away. She stood in front of the door to the dream world. The old, rugged wood was purple. When she stared, it was almost like looking at spilled oil on asphalt. Dark but with too many colors shimmering in it all at once.
The overgrown vines curling around the frame were black. The tight buds that she had noticed last time were beginning of open. The flowers were a color between pink and orange. The vines had grown even longer, digging into the slats of the door until gaps had formed between the individual pieces of wood. They had even traveled down to cover the doorknob and the lock beneath.
Sakura reached for the knob. The vines roused like a pile of writhing snakes. They skittered away from her reaching fingers to reveal the golden handle and the space for a key to slot in perfectly.
She paused. Then tried to touch another part of the vines on the door. They remained cold and still. It was only the ones by the lock that reacted that way.
Sakura tried to imagine a key appearing. Not a lock pick. Not a bobby pin. A key that had been created to open that specific lock.
A shape materialized in her waiting hand. It was a keyring with sparkling pink and purple crystals jangling merrily against the metal. But there was no key. She channeled magic to it. The crystals turned into a little enamel cat with sparkling red eyes. Still no key.
She tried it night after night. Imagined keys in different shapes and forms. One time all she could summon was a skull with a missing tooth. It opened its mouth and a hollow cackle mocked her.
Each time she awoke, fists clenched, a tension headache already forming.
It had once been the easiest thing in the world.
To knock on the open door. To call out complaining, "I've got a headache again."
She tried to dispel the tension on her own. And it worked for a while. But the pain crept back within a day or two. When Madara did it, it was like opening a window. Cool wind rushing through, sweeping everything aside. It left her feeling clear and strong for weeks before the pain began again.
According to her dreams (visions, delusions, prophecies?), Madara wouldn't hurt her. According to them, he would do everything in his power to protect her. Even so…
Sakura knocked on the door anyway. She tried to tame her expression, but in the end, she couldn't stop her mouth from twisting into a grimace.
"Yeah?"
"I…My head hurts again."
He glanced up from his book. "You're overdue anyway. Have you been trying to clarify it yourself?" He asked, gesturing for her to come inside.
"…No."
Madara laughed as he pulled his glasses off. He put them in his book and set them aside.
"You're such a bad liar," he chuckled. He reached his hand out for her. Pressing his fingertips to her temples, Madara channeled energy through the thin skin.
"Huh. Not as bad as I expected, actually," he commented as he grabbed the snarl of energy built up in her head.
"Inhale."
He pulled.
The threads of energy shattered. The little shining pieces scattered in every direction. Like a glass hitting the ground and breaking into a million pieces that would never be recalled again. Gold shards fluttered from her eyes, her temples, even seeping out of her mouth. Drifting off into the air before dissolving into bits of glitter that eventually disappeared too.
Madara was staring at her. He tried to grasp at one of the shards but it eluded his fingers.
Sakura didn't dare ask him why. She held her breath. What did he see? How had she exposed some part of her plans without realizing?
"Your magic feels sharper lately. You've been practicing a lot," Madara observed.
Sakura shrugged his hands off her shoulders. He leaned back.
"Everything going well with the boyfriend?"
For a second, she felt a stab of panic. Until she realized that she had told him that she was seeing someone. It was so hard to keep track of what she had and hadn't said.
At first, during this loop, she had considered avoiding Gaara. Seeing his construct unravel in front of her had been a terrifying experience.
The beautiful network of enchantments that bound his body together had come apart at the seams. The skin on the right side of his face had split open like a healing sunburn, revealing the storm of magic underneath. It was a network of glowing red lines criss-crossing. Pulsating with each pump of his artificial heart. Beneath was a swirling void of deep purple. His right sclera had turned the same shade of iridescent purple. Patches of the skin on his arms and neck had untangled in the same way.
Sakura felt a little sick each time the memory drifted to the surface.
But as she remembered all the other loops. His oil-like blood spreading across the ground. His whole face still and cold. She couldn't help but wonder, cruelly, if it was right for him to know what day lay ahead of him? Blind betrayal or an agonizing countdown to the end?
Not that it matters, the thought passed through her mind sometimes. Because we can always do it over again. None of this really matters.
Sakura forced a smile. "Fine. I've just been busy with my research. But he's been really understanding."
"Sounds like he's not complete garbage. Bring him around when you're ready."
"Be nice, Papa," she warned.
"…No promises."
In the end, Sakura had told Gaara the truth not long after waking from the start off this loop. The conversation had gone differently this time. She hadn't tried to be delicate about it.
"You're not suspicious? I really didn't know that he was your dad, I swear."
They were sitting on his sofa. Knees almost bumping but not quite. Steam wafted off their coffee. She stared through the steam, feeling drained. Wishing she could just close her eyes and wake up to a normal world where things made sense again. Sighing, she closed her eyes.
"I know," she replied. She opened her eyes again when she realized that he was shaking. She had never noticed it before. These conversations had always happened when they were sitting far apart. But sitting like this, she felt him shivering. She put her hand on top of his. Gave it a gentle squeeze. He looked like he would burst into tears.
"Gaara, on New Year's, Madara is going to kill you," she informed him.
"What?"
He sounded like she had punched him in the gut.
"Madara's made a contract with a demon using my heart. He's going to kill you and use your construct to save me. I think that's why he's been helping you."
"But… but he's always been so… so…"
"Kind. I know. I trusted him too."
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Gaara's lips moved silently as he tried to process all of this. Sakura got to her feet. The movement made Gaara's gaze snap over to her. She walked out of his apartment without saying goodbye.
It took him a week to call her.
His shaky voice and long sigh told her that he had decided to believe her. "What're you gonna do?"
She was sitting in her little office at the Senju Academy. An old book drifted in front of her. She flicked her free hand to turn through the pages.
"I'm looking for answers. Stay away from him. No matter what he says."
"…Alright."
As Gaara hung up, Sasuke arched an eyebrow at her. They had managed to cram a second chair into this space that she suspected more and more was really supposed to be a utility closet.
"He really kills him every time?"
"Yeah," she replied without thinking. And then she paused. Looked up from her research. "Actually… the first time around, I'm not sure. They were both dead when I got there."
Sasuke's face twisted.
"What?" Sakura demanded.
Sasuke shook his head. When Sakura kicked his chair, Sasuke scowled harder.
"It's just… you're not okay, I think. That… you can just say… that. And just… be this calm," he fumbled over his words.
Sakura turned back to her reading. "I know. I'll try to be less fucked up the next time around," she retorted.
Sasuke didn't respond to that.