Clem

Suigetsu never felt like the sea was inhabited; he always felt like it inhabited him.

He looked back to the shore, the salt of the sea, the scorching sun on his skin, in his hair, on his tongue. He swam farther from the shore, light, pushing against the waves like they didn’t pull him in. A mesmerizing song echoed in his mind, unfolding by fragments, and he couldn’t help but swim farther than he normally would, guided by the soothing voice.

Beneath him, sea creatures brushed by his legs before scurrying away. In the depths of the sea, eyes followed him, but he didn’t care.

He pushed farther.

There was still this voice, soft and feminine, curling in his mind, haunting.

His arms swept and dove and parted the waves. He turned his head to swallow air as he swam the crawl, and the skin of his arm almost seemed blue, reflecting the glimmering waving, a mirror of both the sky and all that lay underneath him.  

Suigetsu had always felt more at ease in the water, his feet beating against gravity.

He stopped looking at the shore. It gleamed and blinked, minuscule on the horizon, barely drifting above the waves.

The voice rose one last time, stirring him deeper, before it died out softly.

Suigetsu stopped swimming.

He glanced back at the shore. He started. The shore gleamed, blinked, a dot of ground in the middle of the sea.

Suigetsu flopped on his back, content. One arm over his eyes, he breathed slowly, floating. His feet lazily beat at the water as he made his way back.

Something brushed against his ankle.

The fleeting touch grew bolder, encircling his ankle and tugging.

Suigetsu clicked his tongue and he swore. He beat more roughly at the waves, and suddenly his head was down, and the sea was up, and the sun was blue through the curtains of the sea. Shocked, Suigetsu tried to yell, pulling at the hand holding him, but his chest shuddered.

There was no air.

In the darkness, the blue eyes that had watched him for weeks widened.

“You swim like a fish, did you know, mortal?” the same tantalizing voice as before said laughing.

Bubbles kissed his mouth, as Suigetsu sank deeper with the creature in front of him. Long pale hair undulated around her, the purplish scales of her tail rising up to her navel. The rest of her almost look human if not for the gills on the side of her neck.

The mermaid swam backward, watching him, ethereal, dragging him deeper and deeper.

Suigetsu tried to fight her, but she reached up, sharply, holding his face. His chest started to burn. The water grew colder, heavier, around him.

She pushed her mouth against his. He sought air from her lungs, but she was emptying his.

In his mind, Suigetsu yelled, thrashing against her, but she was too strong, too mesmerizing.

“Stay,” the mermaid cajoled against his lips, trailing a nail down his chest. “That’s an order.” His blood floated rosy in front of him.

When she released him, Suigetsu drifted, entranced, dying.  

He couldn’t move.

The gallery was empty, illuminated only by a few lights.

Ino loved those stolen moments with Sasori, when they could find each other in his gallery without the press, without his work between them.

Ino joined Sasori in front of one of his portraits of her, still wearing her dress. She laughed delightedly, clutching her purse to her side, mesmerized by the vivid paint brushes on the canvas; they sharpened her face, they made her look like flowing water, like billowing thunder.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, brightening, and almost regretted it.

Sasori didn’t say anything.

Ino wilted.

She stilled, watching him out of the corner of her eyes. Sasori always expected more than praise. He expected eternal beauty. He expected things from her that she never truly understood, but she craved to be his. Sculpted. Painted. She craved it all, how he drew in, alive, and vibrant, and so beautiful.

Out of vanity, she knew she could afford to love him until he loved her back. She was always next to him. She was always his muse.

She followed him, her heels exploding with each step. Sasori once told her how beauty was loud. She had laughed and told him that she had always been loud.

She smiled again, warmth spreading back in her chest. He knew how to make her louder, more beautiful. Yes, this was enough for now.  

She followed him, fleeting, smiling, in the second wing of the exposition.

Sasori stopped in front of a new sculpture of her in polished ebony. She was lying against a tree, the small of her back curved away from it, and her hair half veiling her naked form. She almost looked like she was made of polished black stone.

Ino smiled, turning her head toward him, but he paid no attention to her, entranced by the wood and the shape of her he managed to carve out of it.        

“I love the way you let me use you,” Sasori hummed, looking through her, at the sculpture. Her bone structure was perfect, he thought. “Like a pretty little doll.” His thumb slid beneath the sculpture’s jawline as if she was alive.

Her smile quivered as Ino remembered how he placed her head with this exact gesture. He had tilted her head back and forward until he was satisfied.

“Beautiful,” he breathed out, and he turned away from the sculpture to stop in front of another portrait of her.

Watching him, Ino knew at that moment, with dread gnawing at her, that Sasori never saw her as human.

He touched her indifferently, she now could see it. He rearranged her like a doll, and always, he sighed, content, looking at her like she was art, like she gleamed and sparkled as a million stars. Like she was on the verge of being extinguished.

Ino stepped back, gutted, weighed down by the absolute certainty that she was less beautiful than the previous day, and the day before that.

By midday, Gaara had to concede that his wheat was indeed dying.

Yet, he still bent over his crops, frowning and wincing in turn. He touched the soil, the stems, digging through the wilting plants to uncover their roots. The harsh sun bit at the nape of his neck as he had to come to the staggering realization that Miss Yamanaka had been correct in her assessment of his lands.

Still wincing, Gaara removed his straw hat, and he ran a shaky hand through his hair. His crops lay dull yellow, wrinkled, grazing the soil instead of reaching sky-high.

Gaara froze.

He sensed her approaching him before he saw her shadow sprawled against the ground. Miss Yamanaka hovered behind him, craning her neck as if she couldn’t see the entire field, dead.

She chose to wait politely, and he chose to ignore her until she discreetly cleared her throat.

His lips twitched.

Gaara could almost hear the smirk in her voice. Since the discovery of his wilting crops, what had mainly occupied his mind had been Miss Ino Yamanaka and her sharp tongue.

He stood up, slowly, his cold smile, biting, when he finally faced her. She held a vivid purple umbrella above her head, matching her elegant dress and her lacy gloves.

As they faced each other, as stubborn and calculating, they silently agreed they wouldn’t curtsy and bow to each other.  

“Miss Yamanaka,” Gaara greeted her, his lips barely moving.

He still felt that the ways of her country and her language echoed, roughened, whenever he saw her. Her, who could slip, so easily between vulgar and delicate.

“Are your crops dying, Mr Sabaku?” she asked, saccharine, and she had the indecency to look stunned, her blue eyes blinking rapidly.

She walked past him to look at his crops, tutting, in feigned solidarity.

Gaara glared at her even if he couldn’t help but admire her, the summer breeze caught in her dress, in her hair.  

After a moment, she whirled back toward him, a delicate finger tapping on her chin.

“If only someone had warned you that the quality of this soil is different from Suna.”

“If only,” he deadpanned, refusing to concede.

A flash of anger disfigured her, pinching lips and nostrils, until she was smiling again, nodding her head in agreement. She stopped near him, her umbrella drawing them both in uneven shades.

Under normal circumstances, Gaara never acted this stubbornly, this arrogantly, but Miss Yamanaka had a way about her that made her inhabit his thoughts. She moved, from thought to thought, with a gesture of her hand, a word pronounced in his direction. She had sunk so deep within him, that he felt he carried her within, something he simply couldn’t afford to or allow.  

“Yes, if only,” Ino almost spat, but she straightened her back, and her voice remained even and pleasant.

“Good day,” Gaara said, barely tipping his hat at her.

She didn’t move, and so he couldn’t.

She smiled, still squinting at the horizon, bathed in the flickering shades provided by her umbrella.

In the greenhouse, there was no wind, but his robes billowed with each step.

Ino watched him through heavy lids. The humidity of the greenhouse lulled her mind, stretching past her defenses; she was dizzy, too relaxed, barely hanging on to the strong scent of soil and leaves.

At the back of her throat, Ino tasted rot. It drenched her. It drenched the air.

Gaara walked past her, and Ino rolled her shoulders back, tasting her sweat on her upper lip. Him. It was him who smelled of rot, she thought wildly, and her body sank deeper, her mind drifted.

A smile floated on his lips, fleeting.

And a part of her awoken briefly, terrified, gripping at her plants, clawing at reality.

Gaara’s fingers trailed on the table, fluttering, hunting. He hummed as he made his way between the potted plants, only pausing to admire the burst of colours of the flowers. Quietly to himself, he said the names of some of the plants before turning back his gaze toward her.

She fought against his gaze, and the overpowering rotting scent he carried.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she sucked in a deep breath. Weakly, her fingers searched behind her for support. They shook, they probed. They found nothing.  She sat down. And down, and down.

Her feet went through the ground, soil piled up on top of her.

She startled awake again, and again, griping at a drifting soil, her nails biting, black. In front of her, Gaara was now inches from her, towering over her. His pale eyes expanded, swallowing her whole.

“It hurts,” Ino mumbled through ashen lips, shivering, tears rimming her eyes.

She could feel herself dying, her body half-way through the ground. The soil shifted, ceding and receding, and it pulled and pushed and crushed her.

“I know,” Gaara said gently, and his hand pushed her farther down, to the underworld.  

Later, when Ino woke up, she was lying in a field of strawberries, her lips puckered, reddened. She could almost still taste the strawberries on her tongue.

She turned her head, her vision whirling. The sky was wrong, too red. The soil was too dry, only the strawberries moved, while the rest was terribly still.

The wind caught the overwhelming scent of strawberry, shaking the rooted limbs of the plants, agitating their leaves.

Ino blinked.

She barely remembered her greenhouse; it pierced through her mind in flickers, a distant dream.

Her hands curled by her sides, digging through the soil.

Ino looked down at them. They were sticky, painfully red, from the juice of the strawberries she had eaten. She raised her hands to her face, blocking out a blackened sun, and when she did, darkness fell upon her and the strawberries.

“Welcome to the Underworld,” Gaara said, by her head.

She shivered as he combed through her long golden hair.