Sasuke & Sakura : Nightlights

🔽 Bleeding Skies 🔼

She does just that, but he isn't passive this time. She almost freezes when he grunts through his teeth, hand still firmly covering her mouth, trifling her noise. Then, he slaps his own arm with his free one and loosens the pressure on her mouth.

Suddenly, she understands exactly what he is doing.

He slips his palms in her hair and messes it up. "Cry quietly," he tells her next, which isn't so hard to do. After all, pain is buried in her very bones. The tears come unbidden and actual pain lances through her, her entire form shaking.

Sasuke's hand in her hair becomes gentler, like a caress, before he pulls away. The room fills with her quiet sobs and his grunts that keep changing pace.

An eternity later, it all stops.

She feels exhausted all of a sudden. It is the same weariness she has been carrying in her heart for she cannot remember how long anymore. Maybe months. It does not, however, keep her curiosity at bay when Sasuke pulls out a knife from his pocket and nicks his own skin.

Blood drips down his arm that he catches with the other and offers it to her. She is confused and wants to mollify his self-inflicted injury, but he holds up a hand and then gestures - rather uncomfortably - at what he intends for her to do with it.

"Oh," she whispers, suddenly very, very embarrassed, as if she were part naked before him. Even so, she takes the blood, smearing it over her clothes and he turns so she can use some more for between her legs - just in case.

She whispers an apology to him as he finally stands, rumpling his own clothing and covering the cut. He gives her a look she can only guess as an assurance of his return and for the first time in very long, her cold, damp heart feels a rustle of a warm summer breeze before everything is dark again and she is all alone in the overly-illuminated chamber.

There are whispers out the door that she cannot understand, but guesses Sasuke is saying something to the sick, eavesdropping pimp. Long after all goes quiet, the 'caretaker' lady comes in and throws old clothes at her and a cloth - no doubt to clean the blood.

Memories of her happier days sink their teeth into her heart and she bawls again that night, noting how red the sky appears from the sole opening covered with a glass in the ceiling.

Tears of blood, she thinks ruefully.

The next night he is there again. They repeat the same process and he leaves, only to return the night after. For a week, she counts, this goes on, the way she is needed to yell a little placated each time until the eight day when she makes no noise at all.

The following day, he doesn't return and she surprises herself with the wait she finds herself in. Though Sasuke doesn't speak any more than required, he is the most human interaction she has had in months. Its more than she thought she'd get.

On the eleventh day when he does come, he unlocks her chains and lets her be, only opening his mouth to ask if anyone else has been in the chamber other than him. She doesn't bother asking why, because for the first time in months, her chains are off. Even standing and walking feels like a sort of liberation.

Out of the corner of her eye, she observes him watching the sky through the opening. Too soon, he stands and she knows her time is up. She quietly accepts the chains once more. Then, he's gone again.

One night, as she is leaning against the wall watching the trivial section of the sky with him, he asks her, "Who did this to you?"

She turns her head, acknowledging the question, to find him staring at her back. She knows he is watching the whip marks there with a frown and turns to him so they are out of sight.