Baths, Bubbles, and Blues
The fire crackled behind the grate, and Sakura fed it more wood, even as she sat there in the sweltering room. Her mind was a mess, and the repetition to the motions was oddly soothing to her, even in the horrendously warm room as she was. It was better than the freezing cold. She hadn’t been tormented with heat and burns for a long while, and it wasn’t like she was stuck in that room. Her chains were gone. She could leave, and that was a marvel in itself. Though her legs didn’t look or feel the same. They could move and work, and that was all she wanted to focus on right then and there.
She wasn’t entirely sure how much time passed with the familiar motions before she climbed to her feet, the fire crackling merrily behind her, water bubbling through clanking heated pipes and whatever mechanism had been used. She left that place of relative safety in search of the nearest bathroom, but she didn’t think time really mattered much, after what had happened.
There was always too much time for her, and apparently even dying and body snatching didn’t change that very fact.
One step at a time, she reminded herself. All she needed to do was find her feet again, secure herself a safe space, and then she could try and figure out how to unknot the tangles of the situation she had found herself in. Sakura nodded. That was something she could do – something she would do. A breath escaped her, low and long, and she moved onwards. That was a good place to move to, she decided. Nodding to herself she retraced her earlier steps as best she could, using the many paintings and tapestries draped upon the walls to guide her, finding a bathroom closest to the room she was temporarily designating to be her safe space.
Traps would have to be set as soon as she scrounged up some materials, and then she would truly be able to relax just a smidgeon more. Nodding again at the idea which had come to her, she entered a room decorated in pastels. It was in contrast to everything else which was covered in vibrant colours and thick furs and rich woods and finery in some display of lavish wealth, the cooler temperatures near the sea seeming to demand for it in the winters, and Sakura found it rather soothing. She had the oddest of feelings that was how the room was meant to be – soothing and calming to someone or another.
Sakura could only be grateful it was that to her as well.
After all, it wasn’t like that room had been made for her. She was a body snatcher. An imposter wearing another’s skin. It was almost odd how much that affected her, given how many times she had cast illusions over herself to make her look different. But this was no illusion. There was no chakra to disrupt in order to bring back pink hair and green eyes. Although she did actually have green eyes, and her hair had been white by the very end of it all.
Though she couldn’t afford to get caught up with those thoughts and worries right then and there. She needed to set up a base for herself there, and then she could go around and try to figure out what exactly had happened. And why she wasn’t dead and in the Pure Lands like she was supposed to be. Swallowing at the thought of the implications of that, she pushed those thoughts aside.
Survival first, she told herself, skin crawling like ants at the thought of being captured again. Or perhaps revealed for the body snatcher that she was. Undoubtedly they would be curious of how she came to be, and curiosity rarely meant anything good when directed towards her. Curiosity meant scalpels and knives. Curiosity meant pain and a want to find out how she ticked. Curiosity meant something bad, and that in itself meant that she should avoid such a thing at all cost. She had lived through enough curiosity as it was.
She padded through the pastel room, noting the opulent bed and hangings, reminding herself that the family of the body she’s stolen were undoubtedly considered well off. And seemingly liked to show it off – but above that they weren’t hers. Though her family had long since passed on. Like she should have.
The dark wooded door on the other side of the pastel room was her goal: the closest bathroom which was situated by that room as opposed to the other bathrooms which were more easily accessible without going through someone’s private room. Entering the unfamiliar room cautiously, as was in her very nature by that point, she peered around, scanning about the shadows as if they were hiding things.
The room was empty, the air still and silent, and Sakura let out a soft breath. She was alone. That in itself was familiar, and she was used to the quiet and the sound of her own thoughts. Usually company meant pain and suffering in the name of science. Sakura didn’t like that sort of pain – the ripping and tearing of flesh beneath blade, pale, bloodless skin peeled back to reveal everything underneath.
But that was in the past, and that was how that had to stay. Forwards was the only direction she could move; the only way she should move.
The bathtub was sunken into the floor, taps shining beneath the pale light of the moon as if calling for her to use them. Marble flooring gleamed even in the scarce light from the little crystal lamps which shone as silver as the moon. Carved patterns marred the edge of the frankly rather large bathtub, her fingers tracing them as she knelt down and turned both the two taps on.
Sounds of water gushing out into the bathtub shattered the silence which had once been eerily comforting. Sakura turned, focusing her attention on the rest of the room which reeked of wealth and decadence, her eye caught by the shelves of little glass pots and vials. Shimmery substances glimmered in the light, and gently, she padded over to the far wall where the stone shelves lay. Her fingers brushed against the cork stoppering one of the bottles, whispering warnings, lingering paranoia making her wonder whether the substance would harm her. Yet she was in a bathroom, and logic dictated that they were bath products. Logic turned out to be correct, and she grabbed a bottle from the shelves, placing it within easy reach of the bathtub as she went and ran her fingers over the many different surfaces of the room as the bathtub slowly filled itself up.
Part of her wondered about her new fascination with touching everything. The other part of her reminded her of how very strange everything was to her, and how she hadn’t really felt much sensation beneath her fingertips for quite a while.
“Maybe that’s an explanation,” she murmured, her words soft and far too lyrical. Something she would undoubtedly have to get used to. Everything about that place was something she had to get used to. What other choice was there?
She turned the taps off, bathtub filled with steamy water, stripped off her vomit-splattered dress, and sunk into the warm waters. A soft sigh escaped her, a bubble of laughter escaping her as she lay her head back against the uncomfortable stone. It was a world steeped in luxury and quiet, and now it was hers, baffling as the concept was.
There was no more pain, no more chains, no more tormentors, and no more Haruno Sakura, or so it seemed every time she caught a glimpse of her reflection in windows and mirrors. She was a stranger in a strange body, in a strange large house surrounded by strange lands. She hadn’t been anywhere near the sea before she had supposedly died, and yet every time she looked out of the west side of the house, there the blue-grey waters loomed, unfathomably deep and wide.
She didn’t understand. She didn’t think she would ever understand.
Though survival took precedence over understanding something or another, and that was all she needed to focus on.
There was a set of vastly oversized clothes in one of the rooms, and it was that which Sakura helped herself to after her bath, despite the fact that they clearly didn’t belong to her as such.
They swamped her in their entirety, both the shirt and the trousers, the waist and ankles having to be tied with some silvery rope she had filched from the curtain ties, and the sleeves needing to be rolled back many times just to reveal her wrists. Sakura didn’t need a mirror to know that she looked completely awful in them – like a half-starved stray wearing their father’s clothes – and yet there was no one besides herself around. There was no one to care about how she looked, because she certainly didn’t mind too much.
She was wearing clothes which was all that mattered, foreign as they sometimes felt, given how she had been strung up naked long enough to no longer be embarrassed by her own nudity at times. Though that hardly meant she liked being naked. Admittedly, she would have preferred to wear clothing in her correct size, but with the room painted red out of comfortable access to her, she was left with oversized but practical clothing. Things which were easier to move about in compared to the dress she had woken up in.
That same dress she had since cleaned and somewhat ruined. It turned out dresses were delicate things, and that scrubbing them too hard could damage them beyond repair – or at least beyond repair for her. It wasn’t as though she had any tailoring abilities, nor did she have the slightest idea of where potential sewing supplies were.
The house – mansion, more like – was far too large for a single person’s use, many parts of it unexplored by her eyes and touch. Which was how Sakura found herself passing time. Exploration was hardly a pastime of hers, and yet it kept her occupied in that place of solitude and quiet. She hadn’t had the freedom to do whatever she pleased in a long time, and she was seemingly making as much use of the oodles of time she now had.
My, the things one could do when no longer strung up and waiting to be tortured…
A burst of laughter escaped her, cold and miserable as her sense of humour has undoubtedly become. She only prayed she didn’t somehow go back, unbidden fears of her situation being the product of a fever dream coming to gnaw at her heels even as she walked soundlessly down the hallway.
There had been a washroom tucked away in one corner of the ground floor – down in the wing of the house which was seemingly situated away from the more lavishly decorated parts of the building. It was that same place down the stairs – where the heating room, as she was calling it, lay. Though the washroom wasn’t the only thing which interested her there.
Rather, the well-maintained, and yet clearly unused forge caught her eye.
Haruno Kizashi had been a blade smith, after all, and the rest of her uncles had helped, whether by crafting the hilt and the sheath of a blade of her father’s creation. Even to that very day she still remembered the raging heat of the forge and the sound of her father striking while the iron was hot.
Yet the forge was cold, her father and her uncles were long dead, and the stars she wandered beneath were unfamiliar. Teeth sunk into her lip, arms coming to wrap around herself as she tore herself away from the sights which taunted her of memories long passed.
There were other places to explore. Though perhaps after a spot of lunch. Her stomach was starting to grumble, and she was getting more used to working the strange kitchen decked in stone and varnished woods. Yet another showing of wealth. Wood was a perfectly acceptable kitchen surface, but clearly the family that owned that place hadn’t known that.
It wasn’t like there was anyone around to show off that wealth to.
Scowling, Sakura headed upstairs, making her way towards the library she had discovered only a matter of hours before. Reading was a perfect way to kill time and hopefully help her relax as much as she was capable. The scent of books, ink, and parchment wasn’t something she’d managed to smell before her arrival there, and she could hardly mistake it for anything else.
It was one of the few things which hadn’t been marred with memories of blood and torture.
There was a twitchy restlessness she couldn’t get rid of, an insidious, unsettling feeling which made her fingers or feet move whenever she stayed in one place for too lone. Even reading books and uncovering more information about that place didn’t exactly help much. Despite the fear of it all, the strangeness of her translocation, and the uncertainty of her future, she was bored and ultimately feeling rather cooped up. Though she didn’t dare take one step outside either the front door or the back door.
Her feelings of twitchiness and unsettlement only grew whenever she edged too close to either of those locations, the sheer amounts of glass making her feel as though their were eyes watching her every movement.
Still, she needed something to do – something to take her mind off her worries and fears which hadn’t alleviated as much as she had hoped with the laying of traps and bells to alert her should their be movement in the house. Her mind raced, part of her playing with the idea of cracking out the sewing kit she had discovered a matter of days ago, another part of her acknowledging that she would soon need to venture out in search of food sooner or later.
Her supplies were running out.
Not that her nervousness about going outside in that strange world was lessening anytime soon, or so she mused to herself as she wandered about the place, stepping over her carefully positioned strings and ropes where necessary. Her feet led her to the same place they had been taking her far too often.
The forge loomed before her, beckoning and calling to her as it ever was, and part of her wanting nothing than to start the fires and forge something. Only she didn’t quite know how to do just that. It wasn’t as though she had taken up her father’s craft. Instead, she had opted for the shinobi path, and as such, knew precious little about the intricacies of her father’s craft.
Yet she had nothing but time before her, didn’t she?
Her fingers ran over the hard metal, and she lifted one of the larger hammers, weighing it in her hands and wondering if the exercise she was doing was truly enough. That body – her body was still awfully weak compared to the one she was used to. Her fingers were fine and soft, a far cry away from the calloused digits she had once had before everything had turned on its head.
The sounds of metal striking metal rang in her ears, and Sakura found herself moving on autopilot as she set the place up. Tears bit at the corners of her eye at the nostalgia she felt. She remembered setting the forge up with her father, before ensuring all the tools were placed away carefully at the end of the working day. Though as she had grown older, she had spent less and less time in the forge. Shinobi life had taken its toll.
Sucking in a soft breath, she gathered the necessary materials she would need to make something – or that which she thought she could use to make a blade, just as her father had, all the while trying to wrack her brains for any snippets of information her father had once told her.
Laughter rang out as she stared at the abomination of a blade she had made.
It was in pieces after a single test swing, made too brittle to withstand a single impact, and she had no idea why. Sakura could only wonder on where she had gone wrong as she picked up the shards with thick leather gloves and a dustpan and brush, placing them on one of the workbenches along the side of the room. “I really should frame such a thing,” she mumbled, staring at her failure.
She wondered why she was so amused, thinking then on how her father would probably have laughed at such a failed creation. That was one of the few things she remembered him showing her – the framed memento of his first blade, a failed creation which he had taken nothing but pride in showing off to friend and family.
“The best thing is,” he had said, “is that from here you know you can only go upwards! Can’t get much worse than this!”
“It’s worse than yours,” she mumbled, heart aching as she reminisced before sighing ever so softly. Her father was dead and buried, and nothing she did would change that. All she needed to do was remember his teachings, ideally without breaking down at every unthinking thought of the man with pink hair she no longer had and warm blue eyes she would never see again.
After all, it wasn’t like she had made it to the Pure Lands, and she had the strangest of feelings she might never make it there at the rate she was going.
Sakura sighed, blinking at the sight of the morning sun creeping over the horizon. Sleepiness ate away at her body, a yawn escaping her as she hurriedly made her way towards her preferred cupboard to sleep in. She thought she had made it quite cosy, a couple of weeks into her stay in that strange mansion. It was the same cupboard she had originally chosen to sleep safely within, carved designs of branches and trees making for gaps in the stained woodwork with which to peer through.
Blankets of blues and greens had been stolen from various rooms around the place, a pillow going missing here and there, along with a fluffy quilt or two which seemed to be stuffed with actual feathers rather than synthetic fabric. They were almost sinfully comfy to ensconce herself within, and she wasted no time in doing just that, closing the wardrobe doors behind her and settling down to sleep.
Her eyes remained open in that strange way they could, most of her mind coming to rest as she lay there, drifting between faint awareness and true sleep. The thoughts of blacksmithing and her failures in that department only serving to amuse her as she tossed and turned silently within the bounds of the bed she had made for herself.
Sakura could only wonder what the coming days would bring, nervousness and worry gnawing at her, even as she felt the faintest surge of excitement at the thought of visiting the forge, and perhaps the library once more.
For all that smithing was usually a craft taught orally from master to apprentice, it couldn’t hurt to check whether the library had any tomes which might help her improve on the little hobby she might as well have found for herself beneath stranger stars.