23

Chapter 23: Twenty-ThreeChapter Text

A/N: Just a heads up, there's a mix of tv canon and book canon in this chapter :)

TWENTY-THREE:

Sansa wasn't sure how long Shimura left her in the white room, depriving her of food and water in order to confuse and weaken her, to shift her resolve, to make her compliant. She only knew it must be days. The lighting never changed from bright and glaring and she lagged in her restraints, feeling the painful ache of them. She had been forced to void her bladder many hours back and the humiliation of it still burned, despite the relief it had brought. She was just grateful her recent lack of appetite meant she had yet to feel the urge to defecate.

She retreated to her mindscape when she could, but it grew harder to focus as the hours passed and time began to warp and stretch around her. She quickly grew confused and disorientated as the shakiness of exhaustion set in, her eyelids fluttering, her eyes unable to focus, yet with the terrible thirst and every shift in position causing her arms to scream in agony, she found true rest impossible to reach.

Even when she managed to focus enough to retreat to her mindscape, she felt little better. At least Mito's hands were cool against her fevered forehead as she lay slumped against her ancestress, eyes closed and breathing shallow. Something in Sansa felt as if it were fraying apart, like the threads of a tapestry unraveling. The uncertainty, the fear, it was everywhere. It had sunk deep into her blood and bone and she felt as if she would never be free of it again.

"Do you think I'm going to die here?" She asked softly, blinking tiredly up at Mito. Mito smoothed her hand over Sansa's forehead again, her eyes dark and deadly as any ocean storm, while Kurama snarled and paced furiously.

"You will not," she said, and Sansa could hear the echoes of the princess, the ruler, she had once been in her voice.

"That's good," Sansa said with a quiet sigh, letting her eyes close again. "I don't want to die again. It hurt so much."

"I'm so sorry, angelfish," Mito said wretchedly.

"That's why nothing he can do will truly break me," Sansa told her, told them both. "Because nothing he can do can hurt as much as dying."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mito asked gently, running her hand through Sansa's hair in a soothing motion. Sansa sighed.

"I really ought to," she murmured. "I haven't yet." She sighed again. "It's a long story. But I suppose we do have the time." She sighed again, closing her eyes. "It's a story that starts when I was still young, barely a woman grown," she murmured, "and the Others, these terrifying beings with eyes bright as blue stars, led by the most powerful among them, the one known as the Night King, rose an army of the dead to destroy the living. We fought the Night King and his army and after a long, difficult battle, in which heavy losses were sustained, my sister slew the Night King, destroying the magic that kept the dead fighting, and we thought that the end.

"We thought, with the Night King's death, the threat was gone. We could not imagine a more terrible foe than the one we had already defeated. But we were wrong. For all that we had feared the Night King and the army of wights he and the Others created... we had never stopped to consider who had created them.*

"The Great Other was an enemy beyond our comprehension," Sansa whispered, face drawn tight in remembered horror. "He was a god and we were but mortals before Him. With all the dragons dead, what chance did our armies have? We knew so little about this Great Other, but for what Melisandre, the Red Priestess, could tell us. That there was once a pair of brothers; R'hllor and a name lost in history, a brother we know only as the Great Other. Melisandre claimed They weren't of our world at all, that They had come from the skies in a falling star of ice and fire and in the crater where They landed, far beyond where the Wall would one day be built, the first heart-tree grew. The Children of the Forest called it the God Tree, worshipping it and taking its seeds to plant across the land what would become known as weirwoods.

"But while R'hllor left to explore the new world, the Great Other stayed by the God Tree, taking its power for Himself, growing dark and corrupted until He was reborn as R'hllor's immortal enemy. Melisandre told us how the Great Other created the Others to be His soldiers, how the Night King led His armies and how He would drain all life from our land until nothing but cold, darkness and death remained. Something had to be done... and so I stepped forth.

"There is a certain power in King's Blood when it is sacrificed, you see. And there is even more power in Queen's Blood. I forbade my children to watch, but they refused to honour my request. I still don't know if I'm more proud or furious. It was... not a quick death, you see. But I ascended my pyre willingly, with my head held high, and I burned for my children, for my loved ones, for the North, and for Westeros. I burned." Tears trickled down Sansa's face. "I burned and my blood sacrifice called forth R'hllor the Red God, Lord of Light, Heart of Fire, and empowered Him to strike down the Great Other.

"And when the Great Other was but ash in the wind, R'hllor approached what little remained of me, still clinging to life, and reached through the flames to place His hand over the charred skin under which my heart still beat, and pressed down hard."

Sansa closed her eyes, remembering that final burst of agony, that final gasping breath that was ragged but alive and real, and then the terrible, terrible hollowness. She remembered the spill of hot, wet blood that sizzled up as soon as it gushed from the cavity in her chest, remembered being unable to move, to even draw breath, her blurred, rapidly fading vision just clear enough for her to witness the god lift the wet, still muscle of her heart now clenched in His hand, and then—

—Death reached out and she stepped into Their embrace.

It had been a mercy, she knew. But the gods were so cruel in their mercy.

"Oh sweet girl," Mito whispered, tears glittering in her eyes, "you are so brave."

"We make sacrifices for the ones we love," Sansa said softly, the painful truth one carved into her very soul. Mito bowed her head, unable to argue.

"You said the Children of the Forest called the first heart-tree the God Tree," Kurama said suddenly.

"I– yes?" Sansa said, confused, blinking over at Kurama. They swished their tails agitatedly. Sansa was gratified to see that at least Mito looked just as confused by Kurama's reaction.

"You need a different approach with Shimura," Kurama said suddenly, with no explanation for the abrupt change in direction from their previous question. Sansa wanted to push, she wanted answers, but she knew to bide her time– answers could come later, when their situation wasn't so dire.

"Kitsune are foxes," Kurama told her and smiled; all sharp, terrible fangs, and dripping crimson. "We are tricksters, liars, seductresses. You may be a wolf, but you are a vixen too. Shimura believes he can break you? Then let him believe it. Let him see you shatter to pieces and let him bear witness to himself piecing you back together in an image of his own choosing. Let him see exactly what it is he wants to see, just as the kitsune who wears the guise of a fair maiden does, hiding her tails beneath her silks so as to steal the wisdom of men through her kiss."

"I know how to bend without breaking," Sansa said quietly, for that was a lesson hard-earned as she knelt before Joffrey's throne, her dress torn as the flat of Meryn Trant's sword struck the bare flesh of her back and she wept her tears of rage, "but how will that help me? I may be a vixen, but I am a vixen caught in a snare."

"That is where I can be useful," Mito said, her hands still stroking over Sansa's scalp, so achingly bare, "I can teach you the counter-seals to those they have inked on your skin. Seals formed by pure chakra will always be stronger than those written with ink and if you can shape the counter-seal to each chakra-restricting seal under your skin simultaneously, you can disable them."

Sansa looked up at Mito aghast. "You have only had me practice forming a single simple seal under the tenketsu points on my palms," she said, horrified. "To form so many counter-seals at once– it is impossible!"

Mito leaned down closer to Sansa, her eyes flashing. 

"You are an Uzumaki," she said fiercely. "Sealing is your lifeblood– nothing is impossible!"

In the face of Mito's conviction, Sansa took a deep breath. "Yes," she said, thinking of how right it had always felt, twisting the currents under her skin, "yes, you are right."

Mito smiled, sharp and sly– fox-like, even. "And there is another seal I will teach you," she said, "one created by a cousin– it's a clever little thing, one that I think you'll find quite useful."

"Oh?" Sansa asked, wary of her ancestress's expression.

"Yes," Mito said, fox-like smile widening, "she called it an assassination seal. Just like a kitsune, stealing wisdom with a kiss, all you need to do is get close enough for one touch."

"One touch," Sansa murmured. "I can do that."

All she needed was to destroy the seals on her skin. And to do that, she needed time and focus– she needed to bend.

~

Naruto knew something was wrong. He wasn't smart like Ko-ane (who sometimes liked to be called Sansa, but that was a secret, like their special language that only they could speak) but that didn't mean he was stupid. Hokage-ojiisan had bought Naruto lots of yummy ramen, which was much nicer than the rice Naruto had tried to cook himself, and he had a nice, warm wrinkly face, but Ko-ane always told him to 'look beneath the skin' and Hokahe-ojiisan was a liar.

Ko-ane had been hurt before. She'd had to go to the hospital before too. But they'd never stopped him from seeing her when she was in the hospital, and he knew she healed just as fast as he did. Something was wrong, something to do with why Hokage-ojiisan had told Harada-sensei to hurt Ko-ane because she said she didn't want to be a shinobi, and he was scared.

Naruto shuddered at the thought of Harada-sensei. He had hated the man, had hated how he made Ko-ane stink of pain and blood and fury, but the memory of the burning red haze and how the man's throat had torn like wet paper under his claws made Naruto want to be sick. He desperately wanted Ko-ane to hug him and tell him it was okay and he wanted Ka-ane to wrap her arms around them both, so they could snuggle together, safe and warm, but his sisters were gone and he wanted them back. 

He hadn't felt warm since Ko-ane had been taken. Even when he'd dragged all her dresses and her blanket into a nest on his sleeping mat, he just felt cold and lonely. Nobody at the Academy would talk to him either. ANBU were still taking him there every day, though he'd been moved to a different class with a lady sensei who kept hitting his hands with a ruler when his kanji were 'too messy' and singling him out for answers he never had which made the class laugh at him, but his new classmates stayed away from him, except during sparring practice where they did their best to beat him into the ground.

It was that loneliness, that desperation to do something to try and find Ko-ane, that drove him to taking action on the fifth day without her, without his second half.

As he made his way deeper into the neighbourhood Ko-ane had called the Yūkaku, Naruto nervously made sure to keep his eyes open for danger. At one point a man looked a little too interested in him, but when he stepped closer Naruto bared his teeth, letting the burning red haze rise up like it had with Harada-sensei and snarled, the sound guttural and not at all playful like when he was with Ko-ane. The man blanched, paling and backing away, letting Naruto hurry off.

The pretty building that Ko-ane had taken them to the night Kazumi-obaasan had made them leave the orphanage was even prettier in the daylight and Naruto nervously skirted around the side, down the alley Ko-ane had taken them down and after looking up at the door and biting his lip until it bled, anxious and unsure, he quickly knocked.

The really, really pretty lady with the long dark hair and the falling-off dress answered the door. "Oh hello darling," she said in her soft, breathy voice, her red-painted lips curling up at the sides. "Are you here for Tama-chan?" Naruto nodded shyly up at her and she bent over, her dress sliding off even further, and ran her the tips of her fingers lightly over his cheek. "Come in, then, darling," she murmured, "we'll go find her, ne?"

Naruto hesitantly followed her inside, anxious and not quite sure why. She took him up the stairs to a familiar room, the same one he and Ko-ane had stayed the night with Tama-neechan and her kaasan. The pretty lady knocked lightly on the door and Tama-neechan opened it.

"Kotone-san," she said, surprised, before looking down at Naruto and frowning. "What're ya doin' here, kid?"

"Um," he glanced nervously at Kotone who smiled at him again.

"Ah, I see that I'm not wanted," she said playfully. "I'll take my leave, Naru-chan."

Naruto blushed at the nickname as she bent over again and stroked his cheek before straightening and gliding off.

Tama-neechan waited for her to leave before turning back to him, still frowning. "Where's ya sister?" she demanded and Naruto felt the tears well up in his eyes.

"I dunno," he said miserably. "They took her away an' won't let me see her. They say she's sick, but every other time she got hurt, they let me visit her. They're liars."

Tama-neechan pressed her lips together. "Ninja lie," she said darkly. "And kids like us go missin' all the time. But we'll look out for her, 'kay? I promise."

Naruto sniffed and nodded. Tama-neechan's face softened. "You got anyone else?" she asked gently. He shook his head.

"I'm alone," he said tearfully and she sighed.

"I'll make some introductions, 'kay?" she said. "Some boys I know, they won't mind another set of hands ta help 'em run a con. Ya up for that?"

Naruto wasn't sure what a 'con' was but he nodded anyway and Tama-neechan smiled.

"C'mon kid," she said, holding out her hand, and Naruto wiped away his tears, reached out to accept her hand and followed after her.

~