oh, but for the revelation of stardust (LOTR/Naruto Crossover)
She woke in Halls so full of life, with a phantom of a terrible being echoing in her ears, marking her as its prey as she took her first breaths in a strange land which is both fantastically strange and yet familiar to her in ways unknown.
Haruno Sakura could only revel in the madness which followed.
Chapter One: the halls of her forefathers
There was a silence before her.
What had been a blur of noise – a cacophony of sound – was nothing more than a quiet stillness which Sakura knew only to be a prelude to one of two things. Deafness or death. Those were the only two options when she had been at the centre of a battle only moments before.
Her eyes opened slowly from where she hadn’t realised she’d closed them. Yet another point in favour of death rather than the enemy taking out her eardrums. They opened slowly, as if veiled by a thick layer of sleep. Only she hadn’t slept in a good thirty-six hours, thanks to the constant stream of traffic in the medical tents and then some battle on top of that much. War was not kind to medics, least of all her. Sakura wondered if it had been cruel enough to end her life and send her on the way to whatever afterlife there was, if such a thing even existed.
It was dark, she noted, feeling rather foolish for making such an observation, even as faint glimmers of light stood out amidst a near black sky. Cool air brushed against her skin, lungs feeling ever so heavy as she drew in breath. Another mark in the probably-dead category. It had been mid-morning, the last she had checked.
Sitting up slowly, carefully scanning her surroundings, she paused, staring at the odd tableau before her. A circular stone floor made up of slabs, the edges of it seeming to mark the beginnings of a endless wasteland of darkness which stretched as far as the eye. Infinity. Oblivion. Sakura wondered how best to describe it, yet the sudden lighting of several braziers grabbed her attention, the ignition of the lights seeming to guide her eye to the figure who sat across from her, watching her with curious, golden eyes.
He was tall, his hair as pink as the first blossom of spring – as pastel pink as hers – with eyes the colour of the sun which almost seemed to burn as they stared into her. “So,” he spoke, long hair fluttering as the man stood all of a sudden. “You finally come, child of mine descendants.”
Sakura blinked, greeting such a statement with all the grace and elegance of a new-born foal. “Huh?”
“Long have I awaited you, Elen Hína,” he said, and Sakura still found herself wondering what in the pure lands was going on as she stumbled to her feet. Abruptly, she came to three realisations: first, she still had no clue what was going on, second, the man—no, being before her held an eerie resemblance to her, and third, she felt incredibly short all of a sudden.
If she really had been related to the literal giant in front of her, then why couldn’t she had inherited that height? He had to be well over six-foot and then some. “Wait, what?” she mumbled, pulling herself out of her daydreams about being taller, trying to focus on what he was saying right then and there.
“You are the last of my bloodline,” he said, all but confirming they were related somehow. Cousins, maybe? Though, Sakura mused, eyeing her strange, frankly alien surroundings, maybe assuming a normal relationship was off the mark. There was something which would be termed supernatural going on right then and there, and that frightened the innermost part of her. Give her battle and war any day over looming supernatural relations.
“Who are you?” she demanded, the words slipping from her lips before she could think better of provoking the creature before her. There was something unnatural in those golden eyes besides the odd, metallic colouring there was to them. Oh, and the fact they seemed to glow.
He tilted his head, golden eyes measuring her, but whether they found her worthy of something or another was a different question entirely. “There have been many names given to me by many different folk, yet you might call me Heike-boshi. I feel as though that ought to be the most familiar of names, though I suppose that name is merely a smaller part to a whole,” he said, and Sakura could only frown at him and ponder on what her life was becoming. “Though, alas, you will not have the choices of the ones before you – for you are the last, and the only one left.”
“What?” she mumbled yet again, feeling so inexplicably and utterly confused. “What are you talking about? I died, didn’t I?” She swallowed thickly, the words seeming to echo in that dark space. “I…” Her words escaped her then, and her teeth sunk into her lip as she tried to figure out what was going on – what had to have happened in the space between her last memories of working in the healing tent to waking up in that dark altar-like room. If it could really be called a room – alone and adrift as it seemed to be on the pitch black endless seas surrounding it.
“Indeed,” he spoke, words making a bolt of numbness suffuse through her at the confirmation that she was right. That she was ‘dead’ in the loosest terms possible. Not that it explained where exactly she was, given she was supposed to be in the Pure Lands. “Had you not been the last you would have had the choice – to go forth to where your ancestors chose, or to return to that where you are meant to be,” he said, and Sakura could only frown as she tried to make sense of his words.
“What?” she muttered, still so confused even as she felt like a record on repeat. “I don’t understand… I can go to the Pure Lands… see the rest of my family, like I’m supposed to…” she said, thinking then on the grandparents she had heard tales about. “Right?”
“No,” he said, those golden eyes meeting her own, and Sakura felt a shiver run down the spine. “You cannot,” he finished, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments, and Sakura tried to recall the image of him blinking before. “Awaken now, child of mine. It is time for you to return to the song. You will know thine enemy, and in my father’s name – your grandfather’s, that shall now be – you shall defeat them.”
Fingers clicked with a loud snap.
The sound of a sharp, sucked breath was all she heard, eyes snapping open even though she didn’t remember closing them. Air grated on her lungs, cold, sharp, and clear, as if a fog upon her had been lifted all of a sudden.
PREMISE: Sakura wakes after death to a strange being and finds herself in Middle Earth without the slightest clue about what's going on. Things are not quite what they seem. Or, this goes off one of Tolkien's old ideas which he scrapped. Pairings: Sakura/Glorfindel.