ZERO / BLEACH / TWIST / REVERSE / DYE / RED / TRUTH (here)
How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, When memory plays an old tune on the heart. -Eliza Cook
The dream shop was already open for business when she arrived. Bells chimed as she stepped inside. She let her right shoulder slump so that her bag slid off it, onto the chair behind the counter. The dreams sitting on the shelves glowed white as she moved past them- at least the ones she had created did.
Shisui was hunched over the appointment book, like always. He gave her a wave, like he was distracted. But she could feel the way his eyes followed her as she took off her coat and scarf. She hung them on the coat rack. And then stared as she wondered why she had bothered. The enchantment would have caught them and hung them perfectly anyway.
"You sleep okay?" Shisui asked, trying to keep his tone light.
"Mhm. Weird dreams, but… what's new, right?" Sakura replied, offering him a smile. He didn't smile back.
Sakura frowned too.
"Don't look at me like that," she sighed. She turned away from him. "I'll brew some potions," she then announced as she ducked into the back room.
A little while later, Sakura could hear the muted sounds of her cousins whispering outside. She pretended not to have heard that as the door creaked open. As the vapors hit him in the face, Sasuke began coughing. His whole face contorted. He squinted at her through the purple smoke.
"I thought you were making sleeping draught," he said, waving a hand in front of his face.
"I never said that," Sakura replied. She glanced up from the cauldron to cast a quick spell on him. A puff of sweet fragrance circled around his face in the shape of a helmet.
"What're you making?" Sasuke asked, now that he was no longer distracted by the smell of burnt bergamot.
Sakura stared down at the bubbling cauldron. The bumpy, green fruit floated to the top of the brew. She pointed at the dandelions sitting on the edge of the table. When she made a yanking motion, they flew into her waiting hand. She let them drift out of her palm, landing in the hot potion. She stirred the liquid three times. Banged the spoon against the side of the cauldron for luck- just the way Madara had taught her.
And then, out of habit, she held her hand out again. There was a pause. Then Sasuke handed over the coffee he had never announced.
Sakura opened the lid. Little dots of cinnamon drifted on top.
"Did I do this last time?" Sasuke asked.
"One of the times. Can't remember which is which now. It's a lot to keep track of," she replied before she took a sip.
"Uh huh," was all Sasuke could say.
So he stood there. Leaning against the doorway. Not drinking his own coffee as it grew cold in his grasp.
"…I'm experimenting. Hoping this will help stabilize the flow of magic in the body," Sakura then explained. She glanced over to see him nodding a little. A thought crossed her mind.
"Do I seem different to you?" Sakura asked.
"Yes," he answered without hesitation.
He reminded her of someone. Someone whose complaining voice buzzed along with all the other voices in the back of her head. Someone who had been her entire world, but at the same time had been left behind. Even now, as she recalled these things, she felt a hollow pain in her chest. As if something was wrong with her heartbeats.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. He sidled up beside her, staring down at the cauldron with her. The shimmering green potion burbled and steamed. Sasuke bumped his shoulder into hers.
"Tell me when you're ready."
"I'll try."
Sakura rescheduled her date with Gaara. That was one of the easiest parts of this whole thing. She had it down to a script by now. She knew what to say and how to make the words gentle yet firm. She knew where to pause to give him some time to process.
He was always so unfailingly kind, even as she began to unravel everything he knew about his life. She had wondered many times before- whether there was a way to save him. But then, she always remembered, she didn't even know how to save herself. There had to be an order to these things.
And then, the next time she knew she would have a quiet night without any interruptions, she drew a magic circle with her blood and went to sleep.
The worn wooden door greeted her. The purple paint was vibrant, as if someone had just slathered on a fresh coat before her arrival. She let her hand rest on it. Magic thrummed inside, tingling against her skin. The vines crawling up the wood began to stir at her touch. When she moved toward the keyhole, the vines retreated, twisting in on themselves.
Her other self had given her a hint.
Sakura looked down at herself. She touched her palm to the place that always ended up gushing blood.
She dug through every pocket she could find. She always kept one of the scrying bones on her. There was nothing. Although, she did come away with a handful of sand from one pocket.
Then, a thought came to her.
She had broken one of the scrying bones in the last loop. Everything had changed as a result.
So would the bones be back to how they had been before?
She jolted awake. Rain pattered against the window. The forecast had promised snow. Sakura stared at the window for a while. She wasn't sure what day it was or how long she had remaining. All of that seemed a little pointless now.
When she checked under her pillow, the scrying bone was still there. It was the rib that always seemed touch her hand first when she reached into the pouch. She closed her fingers around it. There was no warm pulse of magic or the whisper of divination trickling into her ears. It felt no different than the dozens of other scrying bones she had used throughout her life.
For some reason, that made the sadness swell within her. It was like being submerged in the ocean as a large wave rushed over her head. Without even bubbles to keep her company as she stared up at the surface she would never reach.
Later that morning, Madara rolled onto his side, his ears ringing and his ribs sore. Maybe he needed a new mattress.
He started when he heard a breath beside him. He cracked an eye open and craned his neck. There was a lump in the comforter. She poked his lower back.
"You have a nightmare?" he croaked. He cleared his throat a few times.
"…Kinda." Her voice came muffled through the bedding.
Madara blinked. It was still early. The sky outside was grey. The windowpane was flecked with moisture. He blinked.
"You…"
Madara's head turned toward her.
"You ever get lonely? Even when you're surrounded by people?" she asked.
Madara blinked again. A few times. He let out a long breath.
"…Yeah. When you've lived as long as I have… yeah," he answered. And then he glanced back at the lump that was supposed to be her. "Something happen? You fight with your friends?"
She didn't answer.
He rolled over, tore the blanket off her. There was nothing.
"Kid?"
Silence answered him. A sinking sensation filled his stomach. Her face appeared in the doorway, a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. She raised her eyebrows at him as she gave a garbled, "Yeah?" in response.
He rubbed his hand down his face. Sighed. It must have been a dream.
She walked off. He could hear the tap running as she rinsed her mouth. Her face reappeared.
"What?" she asked again.
Madara shook his head. "Nothing. It was nothing…"
She frowned. "Well, if it was nothing, I want pancakes" she declared, walking off.
Madara stared down at the bed. There was a little round indent, as if something had curled into a perfect circle, resting against the base of his spine. It was much too small for a person to have made it. He reached out. Rested his hand in the space. It was cold.
He blinked a few times.
"Dying of hunger!" Sakura shouted from downstairs.
"I'm coming, you brat!" he yelled back as he swung his legs over the side of the bed.
When she was a kid, her cousins had tried an experiment. They had all gathered together in the basement of Itachi and Sasuke's parents' house. Despite the pull out couch and the day bed upstairs, they had arranged their sleeping bags together until they were almost touching. The hypothesis was that if they fell asleep at the same time in proximity, they would meet at the entrance of the dream world.
As it turned out, that wasn't possible. Everyone fell asleep at a slightly different time. And because time flowed differently in dreams, even the difference of a couple of seconds meant that the those tiny differences became hours, maybe even years.
That memory came to mind as Sakura sat on Itachi's couch. The sleeves of his hoodie fell past her hands. She yanked them up to her elbows before she accepted the tea that Sasuke brought her.
"Any luck?" asked Shisui from the mismatched recliner.
Sakura shook her head.
Itachi rolled his whiteboard closer to them. Sasuke cursed as he knocked his elbow against it. He hissed in pain as he stumbled into the kitchen.
"Sorry," Itachi called after him, eyes never leaving his notes.
"Ow," Sasuke called back. The refrigerator opened.
"Did you know… that this place looks like the home of a serial killer?" Shisui observed, leaning back. The old chair creaked under his weight. Sakura blew on her tea. Itachi's marker squeaked across the board. He slashed through a few bullets and added new notes on the list on the left side. There were stacks of books and files crowding the coffee table. The table in the kitchen was also overflowing with research. Itachi had run out of space on his bulletin board, so he had started taping things directly to the wall.
"Still bleeding when you dream?" Itachi queried. His hand paused. Sakura stopped blowing on her drink too.
"Uh… only bleeding when I talk to the… lady. And no bleeding when I use a magic circle with blood already on it as a medium," she reported. The marker squeaked again.
"Magic circle…. medium…" Itachi muttered, circling certain words as he went. Sasuke glared at the board as he squeezed around it. And then he paused. He ducked under his brother's arm to stare up into his face. The marker went on squeaking.
"What?" Itachi said without looking away from his writing. Shisui was sitting up straight too.
"That's some conveniently vague wording, little cousin," Shisui pointed out.
"Oh, she tried it with my blood. And yours, Shisui," Itachi then said.
"When did you- … I don't even want to know," sighed Shisui.
"We should sleep soon. It's almost 1," Sasuke reminded them. He sat on the arm of the sofa to scroll through his phone. He tapped out a few responses to some text messages before he pocketed his phone.
"So we've figured out that using a magic circle with someone else's blood is also effective… and that…" Itachi read out loud. His marker tapped against the edge of the board. Blue ink smeared across his palms, transferring to his sweatpants as he mumbled through his notes.
"We've gone over this like… 5 times already. Maybe we're looking at it from the wrong angle," Shisui suggested, not for the first time. He exchanged a look with Sakura. She just shook her head.
Out of all of them, Itachi seemed the most level-headed. But the reality was that he sort of lost his mind when there was a puzzle to solve. Maybe that was why he did so well working for the police department. And why he'd been promoted so soon after graduation. The man's life revolved around work.
"Yeah, I'm mostly focused on this key thing. It's been driving me nuts," Sakura said.
That seemed to pull Itachi from his musings. He flipped the board over to his additional notes. They spent another hour trying to talk through the problem. The rise and fall of familiar voices began to lull her to sleep. Giving her a gentle push until she was floating in the currents of dreams.
When she opened her eyes, the purple door loomed in front of her. It stretched up to the sky, warped and sinister. The vines tangled over the surface of the wood, writhing like a pit of snakes when she moved her hand closer. A chill ran through her when she finally laid her hand on the surface of the door.
Something flashed before her eyes.
A dream? Or maybe a memory. It was of a woman in a long green dress. Her cloak was too long for her. It dragged on the ground, bloody footsteps smearing against the fabric. She paused. When she turned, there was just darkness where her face should have been.
Sakura pushed the door open. The vines parted to reveal the long hallway illuminated in warm light. Most of the doors toward the front were lit but empty. Madara's door glowed particularly bright. Shapes swirled behind the frosted glass; it was like seeing something massive stir beneath the surface of the ocean.
When she reached her room, everything was as it should be. It was the perfect temperature. The jars of sounds and memories filled the walls. From time to time, bits of colors and lights twinkled from within. A stuffed animal in the shape of a cat sat on the cushion in the corner.
She spent the night crafting the sweetest dreams she could muster. They were filled with clouds and song. There was no danger. They were the sort of dreams that a parent would want to buy for their child. When she opened her eyes in the morning, Shisui sat on the arm of the sofa, staring down at her.
Sakura wrinkled her nose. "Kind of creepy, Shi," she yawned.
Shisui studied her face.
"No nightmares?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Good," Shisui said. He ruffled her hair before he got up to go wake Sasuke.
The following night, they all crashed at Itachi's place again. She slept with the inert scrying bone clenched in her hand. When she opened her eyes in front of the painted door, her hand was empty. Swearing, she slammed her palms against the door. The vines recoiled, but the door itself didn't budge.
Her other self had pointed at her rib. There was no way that this wasn't the answer.
She stood there, glowering and racking her brain for a while.
Beautifully break.
She recalled the whispered command from the scrying bones.
Sakura looked down at herself. Back to the door.
"You can't be serious," she said out loud.
The whispers kept going. Repeating the command over and over again. She clenched and unclenched her hand, trying to wrap her brain around what she was supposed to do.
She reached over, digging her fingers into her side. And for some strange reason, it hurt as she dug her fingers into her skin. Dreams weren't supposed to feel like anything. But she woke up screaming in pain, hands frantically trying to keep blood from spilling all over the sofa. Her cousins scrambled over to her. Healing magic was already charging up in Itachi's hands.
When she pulled up the bottom of her shirt, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
She rubbed her hands over her face.
"I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind," she groaned.
None of her cousins seemed to know what to say. Shisui laid his hand on her back. Sasuke scrutinized her face for a long time. Then, he got to his feet to pull on his jacket.
"Where you are you going?" Itachi asked after him.
"Gonna get coffee," replied Sasuke. He grabbed his keys.
"We have coffee here, you know," Itachi pointed out.
"And Baileys," added Sasuke.
No one said anything else to stop him. The door closed behind Sasuke. Shisui rubbed Sakura's back in slow, easy circles.
"You know… Irish coffee sounds good right about now," Shisui mused.
Itachi sighed. "It's 8 am, Shi."
"Okay… are you not gonna have one?" Shisui asked.
Itachi pursed his lips. And then he sighed before he responded: "Of course I'll have one."
Shisui laughed. He pulled Sakura against his side. The warmth helped to ground her a little.
Madara didn't scold her when she came home drunk on a Tuesday at 2 pm.
He stood on top of the stairs, waiting for her to walk up. She tottered, tipping to one side as she gave him a sheepish smile. She held her wallet out to him. Madara looked her over, let out a sigh, and held his hands out. His expression didn't change as she dumped her wallet, her keys, her hand sanitizer, her phone, and an opened granola bar into his waiting grasp.
"How the hell do you manage to carry all of this at once?" he demanded as he jostled things around to fit better. And then he gave her an incredulous look as she pulled a tube of lip balm out of nowhere to apply to her lips. She smiled at him.
"No pockets," was all she said.
Madara sighed again.
"Did you take the train home?" Madara questioned.
She shook her head, bobbing it a little unsteadily. "Shi drove me."
Madara arched an eyebrow. "Shisui was drinking too?"
She shook her head some more, smiling wider now. "He only had one because he lost rock-paper-scissors."
Madara snorted.
"Did you eat?" he asked, turning away from her to head toward the kitchen. He paused in the doorway, listening for her footsteps to thump up after him before he headed inside. She leaned against the doorway, blinking too many times.
"I did… but I can't remember what," she confessed.
Madara dumped her things on the kitchen table.
"Hey!"
"Sorry. You want pancakes?"
Sakura raised her arms into the air. "Yes!" Madara chuckled as he watched her do a little happy dance before slumping against the doorway again. He waved his hand. Flour and measuring cups flew out of the cabinets. As he pulled his hair away from his face to tie it up, Sakura threw her arms around him.
"Yay! This is why you're my favorite, Papa," Sakura slurred. Madara rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah."
Sakura buried her face in his side. Her words came out muffled. "I'm serious. You're my favorite person… like… you take up all of my heart… I really, really like you the most in the world." The words left her mouth sincerely, but they tasted… stale. Like it was something someone had said before.
Madara froze.
"Are you…?"
He stopped halfway through his question. Instead, Madara patted her arm.
"Can't make pancakes if you're stuck to me," he pointed out.
Sakura slept in her own bed that night, a magic circle flecked with blood placed beneath her. She would have sobered up faster to make a neater circle, but she had insisted on making White Russians. And then that had devolved into trying out the exotic liquors that Madara had collected on all his travels during his younger days.
As soon as her eyes closed, she found herself standing on the ceiling of her room in the dream world. Her hair floated around her in that weird, weightless way it should have in the water.
Her other self sat on the floor with her legs crossed. She was still in her old fashioned nightgown. But on top of it, she wore a long green robe that looked a little familiar. Her other self smiled.
"How are things going?" her other self asked.
"Bad," Sakura huffed, plopping down with her legs crossed.
Her other self shifted her hair over her shoulder. There was an odd, translucent quality to her skin today. If she looked at it one way, it just looked like skin. When she tilted her head a little, she could see the raw, gouged-out flesh missing from her face.
"Bad?" the other woman repeated.
"I need to use my rib as the key to the door, right? But… but it hurts when I try to get at it. Dreams shouldn't hurt," Sakura groaned. She rubbed her face with both hands.
"So you need to dream better," the woman replied.
Sakura dropped her hands. She stared. The woman smiled blithely.
"Is there, like, an actual reason why you can't give me a direct answer? I'm getting kind of annoyed with the way you answer my questions with a riddle," Sakura flat out told her.
Her other self twisted her lips to one side as she nodded her head.
"Like I said before, you're currently a cracked vessel. I can pour as much water as I want inside you, but it won't stay," her other self explained.
Sakura wanted to ask what that meant. But she felt the buzzing of many voices behind her ear begin to swell. When she focused on it, she could make out a few words.
I don't need other people.
I'm not an 'it', you know.
If you do that, then I'll be with you.
I'm still here.
You know, you think I'm much better than I really am.
She felt something hot touch the back of her neck. When she whirled around, she wasn't in her cozy room within the dream world. She stood in front of a cell, huge iron grate stretching up toward the ceiling. An eye appeared in the darkness between the bars. And then another. And then dozens more appeared, all bloodshot. They swiveled around until they focused on her in unison. The pupils went wide, then narrowed into slits. She felt a chill run down her spine.
A grin appeared beneath the eyes, too many sharp teeth glistening. Dripping black ichor that made an emotion swell within her that she couldn't name.
"Back again?" the giant sneered.
Pain shot up from her palm, all the way to her elbow. The flesh and bone of her arm split apart as a bright green magic began to flash from her exposed marrow. A screeching sound rose as the light grew brighter and brighter.
And then, a hand reached out from behind her. It grabbed her by the back of the neck. She heard her own voice hiss in her ears.
"Go. This isn't the time."
"But I hunger," the giant rumbled.
"And so do I. But it isn't your time. Go back to sleep." The hand released her.
With those words, the snarling giant faded into black wisps. The bars of its jail disappeared along with it. Sakura felt her legs give out. She fell to her knees, sucking in deep breaths as she stared at her arm. It sealed along the glowing green cracks. She ran her fingertips along her skin.
She turned her head to ask her other self one last question. When she blinked, she was staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her alarm blared in her right ear.
"You've got to be fucking kidding," she sighed.