Romancing the Kazekage- A Gaara Love Story

For the Village

Hello, apologies for the incredibly late update. Hope you are all having wonderful starts to 2016.

By the way, the tumblr for RTK is being updated over the next few weeks so if you're interested in understanding more about the fic, do check it out: dot com.

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Chapter 20

For the Village

The palace baths, once a place of jubilant commotion, were now left empty. Built right at the edge of the palace with a glass dome ceiling, the giant rectangular bath had its water warmed by the desert sun. Streaming in through the glass, reflecting off the antique gold metal of the surrounding furnishings. Lanterns, unlit at this time of day, lined the walls with delicate glass shades; with the sunlight their gold holsters shimmered and reflected off the water in the bath. The room was alive with light, twinkling as though talking, as though to give company to a frequent visitor.

A girl lay on the side of the bath, fully clothed in black cotton, that same antique gold around her ankles, wrists and neck. Unmoved by the beauty of the sunset through the glass ceiling, uncaring for the water that was lapping at her foot as she dangled it over the edge of the bath. Her eyes, red and tired, her body weak and aching, she sighed. Love had had enough of this world.

From her hair she removed a hair clip; the shape of a peacock made out of a peach-coloured crystal, she let loose the needle that clasped the clip to her hair. Slowly, feeling as though her body were not her own, Ai cut across the tip of her ring finger. She watched with no trace of emotion, with no response to the pain, as the blood oozed out of her self-inflicted wound and ran down her finger. Lowering her hand into the water, Ai looked up to the ceiling as the blood seeped into the bath. The crimson unfurled like ribbons into the water and slowly, her eyes turned wide and hopeless and tears rolled, warm and unwelcome, down her face.

"You were in love with him?" Ai did not flinch as her friend spoke from the shadowed doorway; slinking into the light, a beautiful girl with emerald eyes glittered in silver and appraised our heroine with a keen eye. Ai breathed a little.

"I am." She conceded. Miko walked over to the edge of the bath, opposite her friend.

"But the Kazekage is dead." Miko announced to the empty room, questioning Ai's choice of phrasing; surely the girl meant to say 'I was?' "You said it so yourself." Miko reiterated. No emotion entered Ai's face, no quiver in her voice:

"Yes." She breathed, bringing her hand out of the water to rest on her stomach. The droplets of water ran down her hand, gliding over her fingertips and onto her clothes, the black become blacker, her skin becoming colder. "But our hearts beat in unison and so they cease in unison" she murmured. "We are the same." Miko, whose eye had been trailing into the water, looked across to her friend suddenly, disbelieving what she was hearing.

"You are dead?" She asked.

"Why not be?-"

"Don't speak like this, Ai." Miko interrupted her, not wanting to hear something that might be true, not wanting to hear something that might stop her from keeping true to her task. She walked swiftly around the bath until she towered over Ai like a beautiful willow tree; her long brown curls dancing in a soft breeze as she looked down at her friend. "I was your sister, and yet I did not know what was happening between you and a man you would give your life for." As she spoke, Ai raised herself to sit up, and brought her knees to her chest. As she did so, the edge of her skirt fell into the bath; the black material swirled in the gentle current, unnoticed and unimportant to the girl who wore it.