ZERO / BLEACH / TWIST / REVERSE / DYE / RED / TIE (HERE) / RED

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. -Corrie Ten Boom

They spent less than a decade with Tsunade. The old witch loved to gamble and to travel- traits that kept her from settling anywhere for too long. She dragged them along on her trips until she saw that neither of them seemed to enjoy her lifestyle of swindling swindlers and fleeing with her money when she drew too much attention.

She kept an old hut in the woods that stank of herbs and medicinal flowers. The forests were quiet and rumors of it being haunted had kept anyone from settling nearby.

"Did you spread those rumors yourself?" asked Sakura one evening. A little procession of squirrel skeletons was busy patching up one of her old cloaks.

Tsunade winked.

Madara deposited a dead mouse in her slipper. The witch rolled her eyes at him. He made a note to piss in one of her robes. He liked to send a message from time-to-time. Just to remind the old woman that he still hadn't forgiven her.

It was usually just the two of them in that hut. Tsunade only dropped in every now and then to put up her feet. She was usually gone within a week. That suited them just fine. Tsunade joked about making them feel lonely. But Sakura and Madara would exchange looks. How could they feel lonely when they had each other?

On the occasions that Tsunade was around, she was happy to instruct Sakura. Although the woman seemed carefree, she had been around for longer than either of them could know. He was content to watch them from the rafters or from his spot by the fireplace. He pretended to sleep, but he kept his ears angled toward them.

"So Madara is a familiar?"

Sakura asked one evening. She sat at the round table in the middle of the hut. At one point, he had decided that the floor was too cold and hopped into her lap. She stroked his back as she spoke.

"Your familiar," Tsunade corrected. She blew on her drink. The herbal tea was one of her regular hangover remedies. He often remarked how she wouldn't be hungover in the first place if she didn't drink so much. Sakura was always happy to convey those criticisms because she felt the same way. Tsunade just laughed at their nagging.

"He's not this docile for just anyone. I suspect he'd try to take a chunk out of me if I tried what you're doing right now," replied Tsunade.

A growl rose in the back of his throat. Sakura lightly chopped the top of his head before she resumed petting him.

"See? Yours."

"But how?" Madara wondered, looking up at Sakura.

"How? I don't remember casting any spell or anything," Sakura translated the question for him.

Tsunade tilted back in her chair. The front feet lifted off the floor.

"You don't need an incantation. It's about the soul. If you connect to another creature strongly enough, you create a bond," explained Tsunade. She pointed at Madara.

"You'll see with time that the bond will only deepen. It's kind of like… a good liquor. Only improves with age."

"Drunk hag," Madara scoffed.

"You old drunk," Sakura sighed at the same time. They looked at each other. Sakura giggled a little.

Tsunade taught the both of them plenty of other things too. She was particularly good with brewing potions, a talent that Sakura also seemed to share. They spent those years in peace. Seeing the old witch and then not. Peaceful springs turned to lazy summers. Placid autumns became sleepy winters. The old witch had enchanted the well to never freeze over. And the larder was never empty.

One winter, Tsunade returned with armfuls of clothes from some far off land. She told a few stories, had a drink with her dinner, and didn't wake in the morning. She hadn't seemed sick. She was just gone.

Sakura crouched beside the bed. Madara sat on her shoulder. They both stared.

"Do we eat her?" he asked.

"No, Madara. You can't eat people," she replied.

"Why not? It won't hurt her."

She glanced at him. "I don't know, actually. You just can't. And I can't either." And then her forehead wrinkled. "Would you eat another cat?"

Madara tilted his head as he considered that. "…probably not. Only if I was really, really hungry."

They both looked at the body again. It was strange for such a loud woman to be lying so still.

"No eating," Sakura said again. He nodded.

Sakura poked the back of Tsunade's hand. "Actually, what do we do with her?" she wondered.

"Bury her? I've seen other humans do it before," he suggested. Some of the bigger towns even had someone who was in charge of watching over the dead bodies. He had almost lost part of his tail to a particularly angry one with a shovel.

Sakura drew her hand back. "I guess we can do that. Can't leave her here," she agreed.

Madara craned his neck to examine her face. He put his paw on her cheek.

"What?"

"Are you sad?" he wondered.

Sakura pried his paw off her cheek. She squished it between her fingers. "Dunno. Kinda? She was nice to us. Even when you pissed on her stuff. No one else has been that nice to us before." And then Sakura looked at him.

"I'll miss her," she concluded.

Madara rubbed his cheek against hers.

"I'm here."

"I know. Thanks."

They dug a grave for the old witch at the foot of a tree. Sakura sat there until her nose turned red from the cold. She rubbed her hands together, shivering.

"Am I weird for not crying? I thought people were supposed to cry when sad things happen," Sakura asked out loud after a while.

Madara was sitting on a nearby boulder to keep his feet out of the snow. He flicked his tail as he watched her turn to face him.

"Are you seriously asking a cat about human behavior?" he retorted.

Sakura wrinkled her nose as she thought. And then she burst out laughing. She stamped through the snow, her arms extended. He waited for her to draw close enough before he leapt from the boulder and into her grasp.

"Where should we go?" Sakura asked instead.

He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head.

"Why? You want to travel?" he wondered.

"I don't know. What do you want to do?"

"I don't care. I'll go wherever you go," he told her.

So he did.

She packed up a few things in an old bag that she tied around her waist. Madara watched her paw through the pile of clothing the woman had brought from her last trip. The fabrics were as loud and random as the old woman had been.

"These are all hideous," Sakura noted as she picked them up and held them up to her chest.

"Yeah," Madara said in response.

She picked two of the less eye-catching pieces and squeezed them into her bag over their food and other supplies. Lastly, she paused by the door. On the hook hung the cloak the old woman had always shed after her journeys. It was a raggedy thing with a fraying hem. Sakura pulled it off the hook and onto her shoulders.

Sakura turned and looked at him.

"Come on," she called. He hopped onto a shelf and leapt into her waiting arms.

"Are we coming back here?" Madara queried.

"Don't know. Maybe," she answered him. She cast a sealing spell over the little hut as they closed the door. A layer of the sky peeled away to settle over the thatched roof, the little stone steps. It disappeared into the snow like it had never existed in the first place. It was a seamless illusion. The old witch would have been proud.

They wandered for several years. The money the old woman had left behind was no fortune. But Sakura was good at whipping up quick potions that they could sell in the bigger cities. Sometimes, if Sakura liked the city enough, she would set up a little shop to sell her remedies.

Madara never minded these little stops. At most, they lasted a few years. People came and went so quickly that he barely bothered to learn their names. He would lounge around in the sun and kill some birds to pass the days. Because sooner or later, Sakura would begin to look toward the horizon. And he would know that it was time to move on.

There was one time when they stopped in a city that specialized in arcane research. Although the old witch had done a decent job of blabbing about magic this and that, Sakura insisted that there was always more to learn. The archives stretched across an entire city block. And then the research institute itself took up another block beside it.

They spent weeks perusing the archives. Well, Sakura perused. He would bask in the sunlight on a windowsill. Occasionally, she would find something interesting enough to call him over. He would stretch and yawn, taking his time to make his way over to her. She saw right through him, though. He was just as curious as she was. He had even learned to read by peering over her shoulder.

"It says here that prolonged exposure to high level magic suspends the aging process. And this also applies to any familiars in contract with a spell caster," she read off the page. Madara hopped up on the table. He stared at the passage above her pointing finger.

"It says my life span is tied to yours too," he added. When her eyebrows pulled together, he put his paw next to the words to guide her.

"Makes sense why I'm not dead yet," he then declared. He sat down beside the book to glance over the rest of the passage.

"You can cast whatever magic I can if you use me as a power source," she said. She looked over at him. "Really?"

Madara considered his paw before he began cleaning it. He rubbed it against his face. All the dust in these books was beginning to catch in his fur.

At some point, he had begun feeling the currents of her magic running through him too. It made it easier for him to feel whenever she was pushing herself too hard. He had taken to lounging on a shelf near her head and swatting at her whenever she overextended herself. ("But I said I'm fine! Ow! Okay! I'll take a break!")

"I could. Don't wanna," he replied. He cleaned his other paw.

Sakura snorted at him.

"Well what do you want, Your Highness?" she asked.

"Fish. A big one," he answered right away. She laughed at him.

"Okay. Let's go to the market. I need some air anyway."

She shut her book and got to her feet. With a wave of her hand, the books and chairs flew back to where they had been before their arrival.

When it was time to move on, they headed out with whatever they could carry. Once in a while, when they grew tired, they would return to the old hut nestled in the wild. Sakura's wards held up so well that dust was the only thing that found its way inside. She would dump their things in a corner, sneezing and chattering as Madara swatted cobwebs away from his favorite spot by the fire.

Even though he didn't mind the traveling, Madara liked those quiet moments in their hut the most. Sitting up in bed, she would flip through her newest spell book. He would drape himself over her legs. Sometimes he would watch her. Other times, he would doze, only opening his eyes when her excess magic would tickle his whiskers.

As time went on, their knowledge of magic expanded. The shelves of the little hut became even more crowded with spell components and souvenirs from their travels. Water spirits began to leave gifts by the door. Flowers, stones, sometimes even deer antlers that had been polished smooth in the river currents. Eventually, Sakura formed a contract with some of them. Sometimes, when they grew bored, they would irritate him by flicking water at him while he tried to nap. And when he swatted at them, they would run to Sakura to weep about his sudden cruelty. Sakura would always roll her eyes. Still, that was a small price to pay for an endless supply of clean water and gossip wherever they went.

They visited forests with canopies so thick that the sunlight barely touched the ground. They ate food made with spices that made their noses run and their eyes water. With each new experience, Madara marveled at how large the world really was and how small that made him feel. But then his child, the little girl who had split a moldy sausage with him, would stroke his head and everything felt alright again.

The old witch had been right.

As the years went on, the connection between them grew more complex. He could reach out and feel her emotions through their bond. There were even some times when they didn't need to exchange words. He would clamber down from whatever perch and curl up in her lap, purring until the wave of sadness had passed. And in the morning, she was back to her cheerful self.

That was how he learned just how much her smiles hid the emptiness inside of her. Madara knew when Sakura began to wonder why she would get itchy feet. Why the horizon was always calling to her. Was there something wrong with her? she worried. More than anything, she just wanted to belong somewhere. Would she ever find the place that finally felt like a destination and not just a waypoint?

He pitied her.

He also sorrowed that he didn't seem to be enough to fill that void deep inside of her.

He didn't have to feel her emotions for him to know that.

They dreamt together. And her dreams were always a giant ocean that stretched infinitely in every direction. She would sit on top of the water like it was a mirror. There were never any people or other animals. Just the two of them staring at themselves. It was empty, just like she was.

"You're lonely," he told her one night.

Sakura looked up from her potion with a sad smile.

"Yeah," she replied. She turned her wooden spoon to the right, stirring in a steady rhythm.

Madara huffed. "Your kind usually stick together. Weren't you happier when the old woman was around?"

"I don't know. She was nice. I miss her sometimes. But you're my best friend. You're… my whole heart. I don't need other people," she replied in that slow, sing-song way she did when she was thinking.

"But you're lonely even when I'm here."

"Yeah. But I'm not alone. And that makes all the difference."

Madara blinked at her. After scrutinizing her expression, he flopped back down onto the bed with a sigh. He listened to her clinking around as she added more things to her potion. This one smelled particularly noxious, which was why he was staying far away. She muttered to herself as she dug around in the shelves.

"You don't ever feel that way, Madara?" she suddenly queried.

He lifted his head. She had her back to him. She stood on her tiptoes, struggling to reach something at the back of the top shelf.

"Use a spelllll," he groaned.

"Oh. Good idea," she laughed. She flicked her wrist. Magic threads gathered in her palm. When she lifted her hand again, the threads grabbed hold of the big green bottle and dragged it to the front of the shelf.

"Feel what?" Madara asked.

Sakura popped the cork of the ancient bottle. As a fine layer of dust rose from the cork, Madara suspected that she was about to-

"Achoo!"

He sighed again.

"Oof! We need to clean this place," Sakura grumbled. He listened to her add whatever ingredients to the potion. The bitter smell that had been bothering his nose suddenly changed.

"Lonely. You don't ever feel lonely?" she clarified.

She sneezed again.

"How would I ever feel lonely with you making this much noise?" he grumbled.

As time went on, the little villages they had once known became towns. They could tell just from the way the dirt paths created by people and animals trampling through the grass gave way to real roads. Years passed and those towns became bigger towns. Larger and larger groups of people gathered together until they began to form cities. Those they could tell just from the sound of wheels rattling over the paving stones.

"Humans change things too quickly," Madara complained as they sat on a rooftop somewhere. He had spent so much time teasing her about her clumsiness that she had mastered a spell that helped her climb anything. It made him laugh, how seriously she took his comments.

"I'm a human," she pointed out.

Madara wrinkled his nose. "Not really. You don't smell like them anymore. You're… something else now."

"Is that bad?" she wondered.

"Dunno."

"You think it's the magic?"

"Probably."

"Weird."

"Yeah. You are."

Sakura laughed at that.

They had lost track of how many years it had been since they had met. All that mattered were the days that were to come. They would hang on to the names of places they heard about as they traveled. And when they had gathered enough money in one city, it would be time to move on to that next destination. They still returned to the old hut every once in a while. But instead of spending months and year away, it had become decades.

Sakura's magic had changed in all that time too. At first, her magic was watery with faint glimmers of yellow. As the years went on, the color deepened, the magic itself thickened, until it began to look like molten gold. Her abilities had increased too, a. combination of endless practice and her days spent researching the principles of magic. Dozens of skeletons ran around to do her bidding, tangled in golden threads that pumped them full of magic instead of blood.

They would sleep in on cold mornings while the skeletons drew water from the well and stoked the fire. Others would sweep the steps and clean the windows. By the time Madara forced Sakura out of bed by pulling her blankets off, breakfast was already on the table. Sakura sat in a daze while one of her little puppets cut her pancakes into squares. When they tried to cut his food, Madara swatted them away, tail swishing.

The way Sakura yawned made him think of their childhood. They were supposed to be adults now. People addressed Sakura as "ma'am" and they no longer called him a kitten. He had always thought that a flip would switch at some point. Something that would make him feel like he knew enough about the world. But Madara felt no smarter now than he did as a child roaming the streets on his own. He was better fed and he could jump higher, but he didn't think that much differently.

Maybe that was a normal part of growing up. He wouldn't know. Neither of them had anyone to ask.

"Where're we going next?" he wondered.

Sakura hummed as she took a sip of her tea. It was a nasty brew that smelled like dirt. She claimed that it helped energize her. Maybe the shock from the terrible taste helped wake her up.

"You said something about the sea," she mused. His ears perked up. He knew that fish came from the water, which was why cities sitting on rivers or lakes sold fish in the markets. But he had yet to taste a fish from the ocean. Some of the other cats claimed that it tasted different. Sakura had offered to summon a fish for him to try, but he wanted to go there. To see the coast for himself. And to steal a fish from a fisherman's net.

"I could buy one," Sakura had pointed out, jangling her pouch of coins.

"No time for that. I want it fresh," he had insisted.

Sakura had laughed then. And she laughed now as she remembered.

"Alright. Fish time," she decided.

He had learned to stop being surprised by how quickly she agreed with his whims. It was around the time that he had encountered a bear somewhere in the woods. Normally, other animals avoided him. They could sense that something was different about him. It spooked them enough to drive them away without much effort. Maybe this bear was sick or starving. But it had charged right at him, smashing through the underbrush and slashing through thorny vines to try to grab him by the throat. He remembered yowling in pain when one of the claws dug into his side.

Sakura had appeared, wielding a spear made from jagged ice.

It was the one and only time he ever seen her kill anything. Sakura, who refused to squish spiders and ants. Sakura who grew teary-eyed when she read poetry.

He stopped questioning her then and there. Covered in blood, a gash on her arm, she had said something to him that he could never remember. And whenever he asked her, she couldn't recall either.

The memory represented something for Madara that he would never say out loud. But each time he recalled it, Sakura would feel the swell of emotion across their bond. She would smile at him in the middle of whatever she was doing.

"Love you too."

He didn't know how to respond, so he never did. And she never seemed to mind.