Chapter Text
The desert is endless.
It's silent and scorching and blinding when the sun hits the sand just right. The loneliness that comes from the infinite expanse of gold and blue eats at her from the inside. She has to waste ridiculous amounts of chakra just to heal the blisters on her reddened skin, the only fabric she can spare wrapped around her head.
Her arms and stomach are bare and she burns for hours before the freezing cold of the night has her shaking. She can't afford to be sick, so she wastes the chakra and she carries on.
She draws water from the air around her with a suiton jutsu she feels is tattooed on her hands from how often she does the seals. The desert is nothing like Suna, no oasis, no shadow to rest in after days of walking. She's beyond exhaustion, in that special hell where nothing feels real anymore, but she keeps walking.
The weight on her back is nothing now, weeks of shouldering it and refusing to even consider leaving it behind. It's all she has left, in the end.
The desert is cruel to her, until it isn't. Suddenly, there is a path curling around her ankles, appearing from the burning sand. It's more dust than an actual road, but it's straight and it heads west, where she was told to go.
It's still a long way before she finds the first traces of civilisation. Her nose is bleeding steadily, but her arms are supporting the weight on her back so she lets it run down her chin until it stains the chest bandages. She finds soon enough that it won't matter how bloody she is.
The first traces of civilisation are a ghost town, buildings destroyed and houses turned to rubble. She walks through it questioning if the desert drove her mad, until she reaches the end of the village and finds the corpses.
She walks by and she doesn't look because it reminds her of the bodies plaguing her nights. She simply notices their dark skin and white hair, like Kumo nin and yet so different, a desert people that remind her of Baki. She carries on, until she finds another abandoned village, another pile of corpses. And then another. And another.
By the end of the day, she's still as exhausted as she was when she left the desert, but now she questions if crossing it was a good idea in the first place. This country is at war, and war she knows too well.
She sleeps in a small house at the outskirts of the fourth village, empty and silent but smelling of sandal wood and spices. Her nightmares are coloured with white hair and taste like Suna food. She wakes up gasping, feeling dead inside, so she shoulders her burden again and keeps walking.
Barukh sees the woman coming from a mile away.
His good eyes make him a watcher, tasked with warning his people if the military is spotted coming their way. They've already gone through Kanda and razed everything there, the deep south of Ishval now turned to smoke and dust. Only Gunja and Daliha are left, and the latter is being slowly invaded.
Barukh has lived all his life in Dîmônāh, a large town in the south of Gunja. All he's ever known is the library he works in, the smiles of his older sister and the love of Ishvala. Then the war came and now his eyes aren't reading books anymore.
Instead he sees a woman, pale skin burned under the sun, slowed down by whatever is on her back. She looks nothing like his brothers and sisters, and nothing like the devils from the heart of Amestris.
He was raised with the love of Ishvala and taught to love in return and share everything he can. So Barukh comes down from the roof of the town hall and calls for his older sister. She's the leader and easy enough to find, now that everyone is on guard and waiting to hear his voice.
“Are they here, brother?” is what she says, face like stone and hands shaking.
“The dogs are far away, but there is a woman coming.”
Shterna breathes once, her hand brushing her forehead in thanks. “Who is she? Amestrian?”
“I don't know, sister, but she is tired. She looks like she walked through the desert.”
Shterna looks at him in surprise, before sympathy battles the expression on her face. She nods. “Then bring her to me. We will help her.”
Barukh smiles gratefully, squeezing Shterna's hand before turning around. He runs through the streets, grabbing Ilan by the arm as he goes by.
“What is it, Barukh? Are they here?” he asks, like Shterna did, like they all will as long as the war is at their door.
“We're welcoming a traveller, I need your help.”
Ilan looks delighted, just like Barukh knew he would be. No one loves as bright as Ilan does, because that man just has too much to give. No one feels more welcomed than when Ilan smiles for them, simply happy to meet someone new.
They reach the woman easily, now that she's so close to Dîmônāh. Barukh blushes slightly when he sees how little she's dressed. It's nothing like a desire to be seen, however, because she covered her head like one should in the desert, and her cotton pants and leather boots are practical.
As they get closer, it's easy to understand why she's showing so much skin. The big shape hanging from her back is covered in fabric, strips of clothing and blankets shielding it from the sun.
The woman has Xingan eyes and Barukh never would have thought that hooded lids and gold skin would make him feel so safe. Anything is better than yellow hair and blue eyes. She's tall, taller than the both of them and neither are viewed as small in Dîmônāh.
She looks at them warily when they stop in front of her, her knees bending slightly in a fighter's stance. Her shoulders are broad and muscles show through the skin of her arms and stomach. If the little Barukh knows about Xing is true, he wouldn't be surprised to be faced with a warrior. Crossing the desert alone is a feat on its own.
“Welcome, sister. I am Barukh, and this is Ilan. Would you give us your name?”
The woman frowns, then speaks a few words of Xingan that Barukh can't catch. Her face falls when she's met with silence. She sighs, her shoulders bowing, defeated and tired.
“Nihao,” Barukh attempts. “Wo jiao Barukh. Zhe shi Ilan. Ni jiao shenme?”
Those sentences being the absolute best he can do, because they are hammered into every child's head who might one day trade with Xingan merchants. It's enough to make him feel better when she smiles at him, relieved.
“Ni hui shuo hanyu ma? Women laizi xingguo.”
He's already lost, like he knew he would be, but he's pretty sure she just said 'we' and he can't see anyone-
That can't be.
Crossing the desert alone is risking your life. Crossing it while carrying someone on your back is a good way to join Ishvala sooner than you should. But now that he's really looking, that big shape on her back could be a body.
He can't remember how to invite her to follow him, so he simply smiles and gestures briefly. She thanks him (he thinks) and they move toward the village. Neither Ilan nor him offer to help her. It feels wrong to do so when she suffered so much on her own already.
She doesn't seem bothered by the looks from the people they walk by. Barukh realizes she didn't answer with her name and he's certain he asked her. He leads her to the town hall, Ilan chatting happily even though she can't understand. She's smiling, so Ilan isn't discouraged.
Shterna is waiting for them by the front door. She gives the woman an appraising look, and by the curve of her eyebrows Barukh is sure his sister noticed what the Xingan is carrying.
She has a better grasp of the language than he does, but she's probably the only one in town and if the woman only speaks Xingan, she will have to learn Ishvalan. Unless she doesn't plan to stay; Xingan aren't hunted like prey in Amestris.
“Nihao. Wo jiao Shterna,” she gestures around her, “zhe shi Dîmônāh. Barukh shi wo didi. Ni hui shuo Ishvalan ma?”
The woman shakes her head. “Bu hui. Wo hui shuo hanyu he riyu.”
After that, Barukh is definitively lost, but given what his sister points to, he assumes she's offering the woman a place to rest. She nods gratefully. Crossing the desert has left her in poor shape.
“Did she say who she is?” Ilan asks him as they follow behind Shterna and the woman.
“I don't think so. She said she only speaks Xingan and another language I don't know about.”
“Maybe she's Nameless.”
Barukh sends a sharp look to his friend. “Don't talk like that. She's not Ishvalan, she doesn't know how important names are. She might simply not trust us.”
Ilan shrugs and they get inside Hava's inn. It hasn't been used as such since the war started, no one daring travelling between towns and villages, but Hava is hard working and dedicated. She will have a bed for the woman.
They're welcomed by her first son who leads them to a large room with three beds in them. He explains quietly to Shterna that the other rooms are prepared to house injured, just in case.
Barukh could swear the woman is on the verge of crying when she kneels in front of the last bed, the only one neither against the door nor the window, and gently slides her burden onto the covers. The fabrics slip and uncover a strikingly beautiful face, Xingan in shape but with a grace Barukh has rarely witnessed.
The man is breathing but he doesn't open his eyes. Barukh wonders how long he's been unconscious that she had to carry him through a desert, then the south of Ishval. She's brushing his cheek, her back bowed and muscles shivering from exhaustion. That woman might not be Ishvalan, but the love she has for the man is worthy of every prayer he's muttered in his life.
She rises again but her step falters and Ilan reaches for her, stabilizing her. She breathes slowly, before patting his arm and standing on her own. With a grimace, she unties the scarf around her head and a river of pink hair flows down her back. Barukh tries not to stare, and fails miserably.
She bows low, her arms against her sides, saying something even Shterna doesn't seem to understand. Then she points at herself, before pointing at the man.
“Sakura,” she says. “Sasuke.”
Shterna smiles, the kind that Barukh cherishes. “Welcome to Ishval, Sakura.”
Sakura is not like them.
She is smart, smarter than anyone Barukh has ever met. In two weeks, she speaks Ishvalan good enough to communicate whatever she needs to. Her accent is terrible and she insulted his mother twice by messing up words, but Ishvalan is a complicated language and two weeks is a very short time to speak it as well as she does.
After a long sleep, her first thought had been to make herself useful. It had taken them ten minutes to witness the terrifying strength she possesses. Shterna sent her to the workers who are building a wall around Dîmônāh. It might not do much when the military comes, but it should slow them enough to allow some to escape.
She works every day, from sunrise to noon, then she goes back to the inn to take care of the man. In the two weeks she's been in Dîmônāh, he has never woken up. Barukh doesn't know what illness is afflicting him, but he prays Ishvala to see him open his eyes. The frantic look Sakura gets whenever he twitches pains Barukh. Hope is a dangerous thing around here.
Sakura might not be like them, but she fits so well in their community. It's difficult to imagine a day without seeing her carrying stones that should be too big, or smiling at the children.
In the evening, Sakura sits in the town hall, where the candles are lit and allow her to see what she's doing. She's carrying rolls of paper and a brush and she writes for hours. She fills sheet after sheet with words they can't read and maps they don't understand. She doesn't explain what she's writing and they don't ask. Ishvalan are not the prying type.
When two weeks turn into three and she has taken to training the men in hand-to-hand combat, Shterna gets a strange look in her eyes. Barukh lets his sister think, knowing she makes good decisions and trusting her to do so. Instead, he spends time at the man's side, Sasuke, and listens to Sakura singing him songs in that strange language that sounds nothing like Xingan.
Rani, Ilan's sister, gifts Sakura with a red and black scarf to wrap around her head. Sakura listens carefully as Rani explains how to gather the hair and tie it with the fabric, and how to knot the rest at the back of the neck. Pink hair hidden under Ishvalan fabric, skin tanning slowly, Sakura looks like she belongs.
Two months pass since she appeared in Dîmônāh, and Sasuke is still sleeping. Shterna doesn't stare as Sakura like she used to. She gathers the elders and the priests in the town hall, in the morning while Sakura is working on lining the outskirts of the town with traps.
“I propose that we offer Sakura to become Ishvalan,” Shterna says, daring to speak such an uncommon idea, and yet surprising no one.
It takes fifteen minutes for everyone to agree.
They take her aside in the afternoon, when Barukh assures them she's not with Sasuke but not writing her scrolls either.
“Would you do us the honour of joining our community?” Shani asks, her wrinkles shifting when she smiles softly at the woman who made a home of Dîmônāh.
“Ishvala loves freely, and we love you too,” Shterna adds. Sakura looks between them, and at the two other men. Her bow, this time, is so low her scarf almost falls from her head.
“Your offer is happy for me,” she says, tripping on the vowels. “I will very like to be from the village but I can't love Ishvala.”
Barukh tries not to let through how disappointed he is. He has met non-believers, hurtful people who scorn in the face of God, and though he wishes them well, he doesn't understand them. He had hoped that Sakura would not be one of those. But she continues:
“I have my Ishvala, from yester— from before.”
She slips her hand in her tunic, white, rough linen from the fields of Gunja. What she takes out is small, but she shows it to them without hesitation.
“This is Amaterasu of the sun,” she says, the words rolling out from her tongue with ease, “and Tsukuyomi of the moon”. She's holding a long piece of light wood, pierced with a hole and a string going through. There are drawing on them, the same that she uses to write on her scrolls.
“I have faith,” she smiles sadly. “The gods of my home, I love.”
Sakura presses the symbol to her forehead, her eyes closing to hide her tears. Shterna puts a hand on her shoulder.
“If I can pray my gods but I can too be part of village, then I am happy to accept.”
Zeev takes a shaky step in her direction, his old age making his limbs unsteady. He gathers Sakura's hands in his and kisses them.
“Love your gods, child. Dîmônāh will have you as you are.”
The soldiers come two weeks later.
Barukh sees them coming from miles away, a dark shape moving relentlessly until he can almost spot the blue eyes burning in the shining sun.
He runs down the roof, jumping in the street and twisting his ankle in his hurry.
“Soldiers! They're here!” he yells, as he runs in the streets. Children start crying, and a woman screams. He barely sees his brothers and sisters storming inside their houses, taking up the weapons they've been amassing for days. His only thought is for Shterna, for his precious sister who led them into this happy life for years.
“Shterna! Shterna, they're coming!”
She pales, a panicked sob breaking out of a her throat. “Please, Ishvala protect us.”
Barukh rushes her into his arms, hugging her as close as he can. “Ishvala protect us,” he repeats.
“The army comes?”
Barukh raises his head, finally noticing that Shterna wasn't alone in the room. Sakura is standing close, stoned-face.
“They'll be here in an hour, at most.”
Sakura nods, her hands fisting by her sides.
“Blue clothes, gold hair, yes?” She doesn't wait for an answer, unwrapping the scarf around her head. Her long hair flows free and she starts braiding it close to the skull. The end of the braid reaches her back, slim and so tight it barely moves.
“You love Sasuke for me, brother, sister. I come back.”
Barukh understands what she's saying as she closes the door behind herself. “Sakura, don't!”
He's too late. As soon as he follows in the street, she has disappeared. He looks around, but he can't see her tall stature anywhere. It's not like he can yell for her either, because the town is in a frenzy, parents hiding their children, young men and women arming themselves.
Shterna takes him by the hand and they go to the wall, joining the people who can fight. Finally, they catch a glimpse of pink hair, before Sakura literally vaults herself on top of the wall. Shterna shouts at her to get down, but she doesn't listen and jumps on the other side.
They have no way of following her, because the gates are now sealed. Barukh climbs the ladder leading to the top, peaking above. Others have the same idea, after seeing Sakura, and they all look with dread as she marches in direction of the army.
She doesn't stop far from the wall, close enough that they can still see her when she puts her fits on her hips and starts waiting.
Barukh had underestimated the military. They're on Dîmônāh in fifteen minutes, rifles raised and pistols pointed straight at the wall. Sakura doesn't move, even when they start shooting at the few white-haired heads showing behind the wall. They're not aiming at her, but they're not making any effort to miss her either.
A couple of times, she has to jump out of the way to avoid a bullet, or twist in an unnaturally quick way. Barukh looks at her with dread, remembering her strength but knowing it doesn't mean surviving a bullet to the brain.
“Civilian, stand down! By law, this town is to be razed to the ground and we won't spare you if you interfere!”
Sakura doesn't so much as blink. Of course she doesn't, Barukh realizes, they never even thought of teaching her Amestrian. She has no idea what that man is saying.
“Ma'am, get out of the way!” a soldier cries out, looking frantically at his captain. His hand is shaking on the trigger of his gun.
“Sakura, run!” Rani shouts from her own ladder. The soldiers send a new wave of bullets and Rani falls back, eyes wide open. Her throat is spilling red. Ilan screams and runs to the body of his sister, dead before she touches the ground.
Sakura is looking at the wall with horrified eyes, offering her back to the soldiers. Ilan's cries of grief are loud enough to reach her and she turns back with an enraged shout.
Barukh grips Shterna's hand, petrified in fear. Sakura punches the ground and the earth shatters, a cloud of dust and sand rising around her. The ground rumbles, an earthquake running up to the wall and almost making them fall off their ladder. The din coming from the dust is deafening.
A soldier flies from the cloud and crashes into the wall, piercing through and falling in the street. The sand is going down and they watch as Sakura butchers the ranks of Amestrian soldiers. Her fists are devastating, breaking men in half in just one punch. A woman shoots just behind her and Sakura disappears in the ground.
Barukh can't stop a surprised cry because she's just... gone. But then soldiers start dropping down, swallowed by the sand and the cracked earth. After a minute, Sakura emerges from the ground like a demon rising from its grave. Her hand wrap around a man's throat and she squeezes so hard the body detaches itself. She throws the severed head at a woman, before putting her fist through another soldier's chest.
She goes on, and on, until there is a clear circle around her. A small squad is running towards the wall, using the sheer number of soldiers to escape. Sakura turns towards them and her body flickers like a desert mirage, and she vanishes. She reappears in the middle of the squad and kills the three men in less than a minute. Then she goes back in the bulk of the ranks and continues her work of destruction.
The Ishvalan are silent around Barukh, staring without blinking at the chaos caused by the woman they welcomed as their own.
It doesn't take her an hour. At one point Sakura picks up one of the rifles abandoned on the ground and uses it as a spear, three times as devastating. When the weapon breaks, she goes back to her fists. When there is only a handful of soldiers left around her, she kicks the ground hard enough to have it open under her feet.
Both Sakura and the soldiers fall, disappearing from view. Shterna presses her hands against her mouth, muttering a prayer to Ishvala. Silence falls on the deserted lands around Dîmônāh. Then Sakura emerges from the hole, covered in blood and sand. She does something, and the earth moves, closing over the breaks she made during her battle.
At last, she removes her linen tunic, anything but white now, and uses it to clean her face before wrapping it around her head. Then she comes back to the wall, slow but steady, and she climbs it without pausing for a second.
Once she's on top, Sakura looks around and sees Barukh and Shterna. She takes the few steps leading to them, and lets herself fall until she's seating between them, legs hanging over the edge.
Seeing her up close hurts, green eyes the only soothing colour on her body now. She wraps her hand around the wooden pendant she never takes off and presses it on her forehead, closing her eyes and whispering a few words.
When she's done, she looks at Shterna, then at Barukh. She offers her palm to him, who found her all those months ago, who was the first living Ishvalan she ever saw. He takes it without flinching, despite the drying blood on her knuckles.
“I am tired, brother,” she says with a strained smile.
“Come down, then,” he whispers.
She sighs and jumps, landing inside Dîmônāh without wavering. Barukh hurries down the ladder, stepping close to her.
“I'll carry you.”
“I can walk. I have no hurt.”
“I'll carry you, sister.”
Sakura looks at him for a long time, not turning even when Shterna puts a hand in the small of her back.
“Okay,” she says finally. Barukh turns around and she climbs on his back. They walk in silence, no one saying anything to them as they go to Hava's inn. He drops her off on Sasuke's bed and she curls around the sleeping man who doesn't so much as breathes louder.
“Sleep, Sakura.”
She looks him in the eyes and smiles softly, before closing her eyes.
Barukh leaves the inn and finds what seems to be the entire population of Dîmônāh waiting for him.
“She's resting,” he says, loud enough for most of them to hear.
“We will talk about everything later,” Shterna states. “For now, we have a wall to fix and bodies to burn. We don't want coyotes to gather around here.”
People are nodding, already breaking off in groups.
“Shani, we need to count our dead and pay them the respect they deserve.”
“Only Rani,” the priest says, “and Ilan has already taken her to the hall of the dead.”
Shterna draws a shaking breath, her hand coming to cover her eyes.
“Okay. Then I need you to do something for me.”
“Yes, leader?”
“Ask around. See who would agree to have Sakura live with them, or if we have a house to give her and Sasuke.”
She looks at the hole in the wall, the dead soldiers around, and thinks of the only person who died when the army normally destroys everything it passes through.
“It's the least we can do for her.”