Some Fall By Virtue

Chapter Eleven: rollin' in the deep

TRIGGER WARNING: Sakura doesn't care if she dies since her mental state isn't the greatest, so if this will trigger you... here is your warning.

Her heart ached, feeling as though it had been torn asunder. For a third time. Sakura could barely hold back the snort which came with that dark thought. Rubbing at her chest, right over her sternum, she recalled the cold, pale white hand which had ripped through flesh, bone, and organ there. She would never be able to forget that hand, nor the spinning red eyes which had whirled as they met her acrid green set, nor even the betrayal which had set in both times, giving rise to her anger. She had thought Sasuke loved her, and in her mind back then love didn't have anything to do with ripping people's hearts out. Sakura smiled, a grim little thing. Ah, how blissfully ignorant she had been back then. Love, it seemed, for her had everything to do with heartache and pain.

But in that world she definitely deserved it – penance for her numerous sins. She was a monster. A terrible beast who only brought death and destruction, who ruined the lives of everyone around her. Yet another reason why she should have been as far away as physically possible from her soulmate as they trekked back to Rivendell. Imladris. She shouldn't have been going there either. It was practically sacrilege. She was a dragon through and through, a creature of Morgoth, a weapon for the enemy to use and discard. There was no place for her in an elven settlement, even if her soulmate was an elf. Who thankfully thought her dead. Sakura wouldn't enlighten him otherwise.

"You are not in too much pain, are you?" Glorfindel asked, blissfully oblivious to her wish to be on the other half of the continent to him. "My offer from before still stands..."

"Not happening," Sakura hissed, baring her teeth at him. "Ever." She could make it to Rivendell on her own steam. Like hell she was letting an elf carry her to a place which would repel her very nature itself. If she was going to walk into a dragon's hell, then it would be on her own terms with her own feet. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Stubborn fool," he murmured, oblivious to just how sharp her ears were, and Sakura rolled her eyes. She was that and more. An utterly stupid fool for ever craving the love of her so-called 'creator'. An utterly stupid fool for taking her rage against Sasuke out on the world there. "Though I suppose we might as well indulge in more conversation to pass the time, and perchance move your thoughts onto something less painful."

"Such as?" she questioned, cursing her curious nature. And the fact she couldn't seem to deny him anything. She should have been hurrying away – not indulging in more conversation with her beloved, wonderful soulmate.

Glorfindel smiled, and Sakura was hit with the full force of his beauty. She wanted to scream at him not to play with her heart like that. "Did you ever get your dagger back?" he asked, and Sakura felt her brow furrow in confusion at the question. What dagger? Clearly, her confusion was palpable, and so her soulmate elaborated. "The one you used upon the dragon – to slit its throat open – you did not have it when Aravir and I found you," he said, and she blinked dumbly. "It was a terribly messy cut. In fact, it looked more as though you tore through its skin and scales with your bare hand... but that would be impossible, even as strong as you are, Lothien."

Sakura swallowed, throat suddenly incredibly dry because that was exactly what happened, albeit with chakra involved. Thank Valier she looked human, and that elves and men knew naught of the fact there once existed a dragon skin-changer. "Er... No," she said. "It appears to have been lost. Though I had forgotten all about it, if I am perfectly honest." When are you ever perfectly honest? the snide voice questioned, and Sakura ground her teeth together.

"Well, seeing as that dagger served as a great aid to you, it would be rather remiss of you to not replace such a weapon," he said, and Sakura blinked as a dagger was held out to her. Swallowing thickly, she stared at the unmistakably elven craft, blinking once more as the weapon was thrust in her grasp and left there.