moor

A taste of the warm-up fic writing that's been happening...

Pairing: Indra/Sakura | Vampire AU | Rated T (M coming very soon)
Words: Approx 4,000

Sakura pulled her hood back slightly as she looked down at her potential new charge and guardian.

"You think it is time?" remarked Kakashi from beside Sakura. In the forest outside the Ōtsutsuki keep, he kept his sword close at hand as the pair met Hagoromo, the clan-head who had requested the binding.

"He has trained. He is loyal," said the dark-haired man, looking down at his long-haired eldest son. "He is ready."

Tilting her head, Sakura studied the boy's keen eyes and steady countenance. He displayed no fear, though his heart thumped hard in his chest. He held her gaze, his heart beating faster.

"How old is he?" asked Sakura, focusing on the boy's father again.

"Ten."

Sakura's brows drew together and she pursed her lips.
"He is young," she said softly. "I don't imply that you're incapable," she added for the boy's benefit. "Only that... this is not a decision to make lightly. You have so much still to learn... so much to see, to... live for."

"It is what I desire," declared the young man.

A flicker of emotion passed through Sakura's emerald gaze.

Beside her, Kakashi's voice gentled, though remained firm so as not to condescend to a nightwalker of her rank.

"You're the last of your line, Sakura. The choice is yours," counselled Kakashi, her foster-father and mentor. "It doesn't have to be a full acceptance; it can be a promise for the future; or a promise to consider the request, in the future," he added. "There is no rush."

"No rush for you, perhaps," said Hagoromo, his eyes holding Kakashi's and his voice leaking hostility. "Though that could change."

Sakura nodded slowly. "I have heard the rumours. They're true, then?"

Hagoromo dipped his chin. "If anything, the rumours are only the beginning. We suspect more has happened, in truth, than has been revealed. Our scouts are no longer reporting back as frequently, or at all, in some of the outlying provinces."

Sakura looked sharply at Kakashi, but his hood shadowed his masked features. The urge to question him burned in her heart, but she dared not tarnish his all-knowing reputation in front of such an important ally—yet. The slick of unease from those around her in recent years had spread further, thicker, among her foster family. That the leader of the Ōtsutsuki would speak openly of losing his spies was both strategic and, she sensed, true.

Unrest lay heavy in Sakura's heart; unrest, and yet, determination.

"Some are still reporting, though?" she asked, standing straighter.

"Yes."

Kakashi's leaden gaze weighed on Sakura's shoulders, but she ignored him in favour of studying the boy at Hagoromo's side.

"What is your name?" she asked the child.

"Indra, Ma'am."

"Mistress," corrected Sakura. She smiled at him, this new youngling, this boy who would become a man at her side. From around her neck she drew her clan's amulet before pricking her finger and letting three drops of her blood pass over its carnelian sigil. Ash formed, smoke rose, and when she held it out to him, a circle had been carved into its reverse surface. "I am your sword, Indra."

Kakashi and Hagoromo stood at attention as Indra calmly pricked his own finger with a dagger pulled from his sleeve, and dripped three drops of his own blood overtop hers. The carnelian hissed and deepened to a bloody crimson; now a fan was etched inside the circle.

"I am your shield, Mistress," repeated Indra to his new Master.

***

Indra proved to be quicker on his feet than Sakura had imagined. His manners were impeccable, his intelligence scintillating, his confidence sure and quiet, and his diplomacy eloquent.

"You chose well," said Kakashi, who supervised the youngling's training.

"Hmm?" asked Sakura, her eyes still on Indra in the dirt-floored sparring ring, deep inside their own keep. Indra remained with their own clan that winter, away from his family.

"Where previous apprentices would have doubted themselves or shown hesitation with new weaponry, afraid to injure their Masters, he moves swiftly with his goal in sight at all times," he explained.

"He still seeks to prove himself," murmured Sakura, her eyes narrowing and lips thinning as one of her brethren narrowly missed being skewered by the sharpened staff Indra trained with. She spent whatever free time she could overseeing his progress. Whenever he noticed her—his triple-beating heart his only tell—he doubled down on his efforts, regardless of his opponent.

Indra, his long hair tied back in a loose bun, rolled across the ground before launching back to his feet, his staff already outstretched to gain distance from his 'attacker'. He was fourteen now. Another year or so and he would be at her side... out there.

He was still so young.

"You can't coddle him forever," remarked Kakashi.

"I'm not."

"Three separate sparring practices a day, plus conditioning training, plus running drills, strategy sessions with the—"

"He needs to be challenged," Sakura said, shrugging her shoulder.

"He needs a taste of what he'll see when he formally becomes your thrall."

Sakura's lips turned down.

Kakashi's visible brow raised.

"Sakura..."

"He's too intelligent to keep as a thrall," she stated.

"He's too intelligent, or you're too attached?"

"The former."

Her mentor watched her knowingly.

"I'm old enough to make my own decisions about my servants."

"Are you? Three hundred is still young enough to make... mistakes."

"I don't make mistakes," said Sakura.

Kakashi turned back to Indra's training and leaned against hand-hewn stone walls of the underground dungeon-slash-sparring 'room'. The cold outside didn't bother him a whit; he barely noticed it, what with having been undead for nearly a millenia already. In the dark room lit only by lantern light, the shadows played long and sharp against the walls and hard ground, hiding hazards that were strewn about until tripped over.

Indra had memorized the hazards in the room within three sparring sessions.

"As long as one does their best, there is nothing to regret," said Kakashi casually.

"Exactly," agreed Sakura, studying Indra's flawless takedown.

"Yield," ordered Indra, his stake pressed into the area above the heart of the vampire who panted, sprawled out beneath him.

"Yield," agreed the four hundred year old vampire with a grin. He looked up at Sakura. "You chose well, My Lady."

Sakura nodded. "I did," she agreed, her eyes firmly on Indra.

Indra straightened. From the moment he'd called 'yield', his eyes never left Sakura's. Around his throat, beneath his sweat-drenched shirt, rested the amulet, pulsing with their shared life-force.

***

Wrapping her heaviest cloak around herself and belting it in place, Sakura reached for her gloves only for them to disappear from under her grasp.

Not again, she thought tiredly. She closed her eyes and counted to ten.

Stretching out her hand, palm up, she said, "I must go, Indra. Give me my gloves."

"I'll go with you."

"You will remain and you will train with Master Kakashi."

"I'm ready."

"You will remain and you will train with Master Kakashi."

"I'm seventeen, Mistress."

"You are. You're also to remain and train with—"

"I know you're going to the outlands."

The hand still at Sakura's side curled into a fist. Heads would roll when she returned. Her work was to be kept from Indra, no matter how he cajoled the rest of their staff. That was the rule. She didn't doubt that it had been one of the younger, pretty staff he had tricked this time. He always seemed to find the weakest links and exploit them. He was brilliant, of course, and she admired his intellect, but it damned her time and again when he used said intellect against his own Mistress.

"Is my father sending you?"

"My gloves."

"Are you going in my stead? Did he make you take my place, so he would have an envoy that wouldn't risk his heir?"

"My. Gloves."

"You can't go alone. I won't let you."

Sakura's cutting glare snapped to Indra's and skewered him in place like a bug on a collector's board. "You have no say or sway over me," she said with precise calm. She didn't need to move a muscle to exude the anger and danger she felt in that moment. The room around them chilled so rapidly frost formed on the walls.

For all her forsight, she hadn't expected Indra's next words.

"Do you think I didn't feel it?"

"My displeasure?" she asked caustically.

"They burned you. They tried to burn you alive. I know."

By Hell's unholy bells, she would mount her gossipy servants' heads on fucking pikes when she returned. She had entertained his nonsense long enough.

"You give me my gloves now and I won't break both your legs," said Sakura.

"Sa—Mistress..."

Sakura's emerald gaze hardened as she lifted her chin. He'd seen her do it before to others who had failed to heed her warnings. To her further grief, Indra did not swallow or back down, though the fire in his dark eyes captivated her more than it should.

It galled her that she had to lift her chin to maintain eye contact with him now, he'd grown so tall. And broad. And strong.

"Stay here or there will be Hell to pay," cautioned Sakura in a whisper.

"You won't kill me."

The gloves, warm from Indra's hands, were placed in her palm.

"No, I won't," agreed Sakura. "I invested a great deal in you."

She let the silence hang before she tugged on the gloves and turned away from him.

"I'll pay a visit to your family on my way back... and tell your brother hello," she added over her shoulder.

She strode out of her castle keep and out into the snowy night, pretending she hadn't heard Indra's sharp inhale.

***

"Don't do it, Indra," sighed Kakashi.

The Master had found the youngling in Lady Sakura's chambers—again—watching her leap through the snowdrifts under the full moon. He gripped his sword sheath with white-knuckled fingers, his back rigid as his other hand clawed at the stone windowframe.

Ever since they had taken on the apprentice, Sakura had given the boy far too much leeway; when he was very young, even inviting him up to her private room in the tower when she was away so he could watch her until she reached the horizon and disappeared. That he had returned every time she left since proved that first occasion had set a very bad precedent, in Kakashi's opinion. Even Sakura's personal staff were not allowed in her quarters when she was absent from the castle keep. If not for how professionally she treated Indra otherwise, he knew rumours would have started about the pair already.
Lady Sakura understood that, too, and intentionally kept Indra at a distance. It had become a distance whose boundaries the young man constantly challenged of late.

"Will she harm my brother?" asked Indra lowly.

"I wouldn't gamble with Lady Sakura," said Kakashi. "Or her good graces."

Indra's fingers curled into a fist as his head lowered, yet he didn't turn away from the window. Sakura's form moved elegantly across the snow, like a whisp of smoke blown against the night. Indra's eyes traced ever move with practiced ease and dedication.

A quietude settled between the men as each watched Sakura go. Another minute or so and she would reach the horizon and disappear for days, weeks, possibly months. Possibly forever.

Out across the moors, through the window, Sakura's shadow winked out of sight.

Indra's shoulders sank.

"What can I do to prove to her that I'm ready?" asked Indra quietly, staring at the last point she had been visible.

"It's not for you to prove," said Kakashi. "It's for her to accept."

***

In his warm chambers that night, Indra folded into his meditative sit. The hearth was warm at his back, his supper warm in his belly, his amulet warm against his heart. With his eyes focused on the single candle flame in the brass holder before him, he lowered his eyelids to halfmast and began inhaling and exhaling in a slow, regular rhythm.

Time passed.

His rhythm never faltered.

He sat for minutes, then hours, then days, focused on the double-beat of hearts within the amulet on his chest.

In his mind's eye he saw her route, saw her hunt, saw her kill as if he were part of her. In a way, he was.

On the fifth day he swayed, weak from hunger and thirst, before collapsing to the icy stone floor of his room, his hearth long since extinguished and cold, his doors locked to prevent interruption from the other staff.

"Mis...tress..." the prayer fell from his cracked lips and then he was silent, hardly a lift to his chest left on his inhale. His amulet tumbled from his shirt to smash against the floor.

That was where Kakashi found Indra after breaking down his door—but not before Indra had seen Sakura's last sight, felt her last emotion.

—Blazing fury.

Indra's lips twitched as Kakashi swore, grabbed him and threw him over his shoulder, rushing him through the castle to their healer.

... Now he'd really gone and done it.

***

The records of The Terror that occurred were in many towns too ghastly to report in good conscience. To some, a shroud ripped through the wyld things that had been troubling them, shredding their demonic carcasses limb from limb before disappearing again. To others, all that remained was the bloodbath, and the darkness that had plagued their town evaporated overnight. Like a fleeting rash of purges all across the land, The Terror tore across the countryside from the outlands to the seaside before finally dissipating in the ruins of a castle keep like a blustery moor gale.

The voracious intensity of its destruction, while helpful in alleviating the otherwordly pests, left many villagers chilled in its grim wake.

Where had such a force come from?
... and where had it gone?...

***

Kakashi paled at the poison that dripped from Sakura's lips as she scrambled in his arms to unleash herself on her apprentice.

"I swear I'm going to—"

"He's alive," growled Kakashi as he struggled to hold her snarling, shape-shifting form back. "He's going to be fine."
"Not after I'm done with him!"

Kakashi groaned. Stupid kids.

"He's sleeping it off."

"I'll teach him how to sleep—he abused the bond, Kakashi! If something had happened to me while he was—"
"I know. He knows. We all know."

"Does he understand how ridiculously dangerous and stupid that was!"

"Yes."

"What was he thinking!"

"If you speak with him when he—"

"I'm doing more than speaking with his intrusive, reckless, pig-headed—"

A feminine voice cleared her throat behind them.

"... Master Indra has woken," said the healer calmly.

Sakura blinked.

—then tossed Kakashi bodily aside like a ragdoll as she flew into Indra's room, her batwings still outstretched in her mad rush to see her apprentice. The door slammed shut behind her.

Then the real verbal massacre rose, the walls around them trembling with the volume of Lady Sakura's displeasure.

Quickly moving out of the way of the rabid Mistress, the healer tucker her chin and hid her smile behind her hand.

From the floor, Kakashi groaned loudly.

"Would you like a cup of tea, Master Kakashi?" asked the healer kindly.

"Yes, please. And please tell the staff to pack up house for a few days," moaned Kakashi, a hand over his face. "We're moving to the summer house until they sort this out."

***

The castle keep lay empty but for the pair of Mistress and apprentice the following days.

Storms circled the ruins—as that was how they appeared to those outside their coven—thunder, lightning, hail, and torrential sleet pounding the grounds as the kin inside aired their grievances, with no holds barred.

Brutal. Honest. Emotional. Vulnerable. They shared all.

When the storms abated, Lady Sakura collapsed, chest heaving, across Indra's bed, her wings limp across her shoulders and sides, her eyes heavy, her voice hoarse. She had lost her cloak somewhere over the moors who-only-knew-where. In her race home, only one thing had been on her mind.

"Don't ever, ever, scare me like that again," she croaked, as sleep finally overcame her.

His long fingers threaded through her silky, coral hair, Indra's eyes softened when her breath evened out, fanning over his forearms where she had dug in her talons and screamed in his face only hours earlier.

"I promise, My Lady," vowed Indra.

***

"You're returning to the outlands?" asked Indra the following day, once Lady Sakura woke.

She nodded.

His jaw firmed.

From under the soft, heavy comforter—which confused her, because she didn't remember climbing into Indra's bed—Sakura let out a long, slow exhale.

"You're coming with me," she added quietly.

In the middle of pouring them tea at his hearth, Indra set down the boiling kettle.

"Once we've regained our strength, we'll head out together," continued Sakura. "The wolves have lost control of one of their packs, and their numbers are growing exponentially due to uncontrolled breeding. We're needed."

Facing Sakura directly in his nightclothes, his hair long and loose with the exception of the two tails at the front, Indra frowned. "The vampire and wolf covens are kin. This sounds like a trick. Did they ask for help?"

Sakura shook her head. "Their current leader does not ask for help. His brothers came to your father to request assistance. The wolves know of our... partnership."

Indra studied Sakura's expression.

"Are you upset about the fate of your cousins, or are you embarrassed that they know about our 'partnership'?"

Sakura frowned. She closed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair, her lips tight.

"Some of the wolves are like sisters to me... We'll be targeting the females and their pups," explained Sakura. "To prevent the breeding from continuing. Then we'll attack the leader, if he hasn't found us by the time he gets wind of what we're doing."

Indra's throat tightened.

"It's a cull," he realized aloud. "But it sounds like a trap. For you."

Sakura continued to ignore Indra's rising irritation. "The females don't get any choice in what happens to them. Things are different between wolves and vampires. I had wanted to broach a truce, a real truce, with the wolves before my five hundredth birthday, but I don't see that being possible—"

"Five—what?" asked Indra, staring at Sakura with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

"My five hundredth... Oh..." Sakura looked away. Had she been human she may have blushed. "How old did you think I was?" she asked, curious. She tucked a lock of her loose hair behind her ear, still avoiding his eyes.

"I never considered the exact number," admitted Indra, his brows furrowing. "You were always... there."

Sakura's grin was crooked as she chuckled awkwardly under her breath, shaking her head.

"Always there," she agreed. "Yes. I suppose that's me. Always there."

For the first time, Sakura caught the dichotomy of innocent youth and dawning manhood in Indra's eyes when he next spoke.

"The clan always spoke of you as if you were a constant... I hadn't thought about it until now."

Silence stretched between them.

Looking anywhere but at Indra, Sakura patted the comforter.
She still couldn't remember when she crawled into Indra's bed and under the covers. Strange.

"If you don't want to go, you don't have to. I won't head out for at least another day or two. There is time for you to decide. I'll... just head to my room to wash up," mumbled Sakura, letting her hair fall forward to hide her face. She looked around for her shoes, but not finding them, she climbed to her aching feet. Glancing down, she found her robes were a mess, crusted over with dried blood and... were those splatters of entrails? And she'd been in Indra's bed? Mentally she groaned. She was a disgusting mess.

"Burn your bedding. I'll arrange for new ones for you," said Sakura, glad for once that she couldn't see her own mortified reflection in any surface.

"Where should I stay in the meantime?"

"A guest room," sighed Sakura, embarrassed. She had never lost control of herself like this before.

"I could stay somewhere else," offered Indra.

"Wherever you want," said Sakura hurriedly, shuffling to the door. Her head and body had never felt so weak before. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stumbled around in front of another person, with the exception of a particularly vicious battle or two. "I'll send a summon to Kakashi to let him know... that the storm has passed. And then I'm going to bathe and sleep for another two days. Wake me up only if it's mortally important."

"Yes, My Lady."

"Mistress," mumbled Sakura, yawning. Indra was old enough to know better than to call her 'My Lady'... Really, what was the boy thinking?...

An hour later, in the privacy of her room, the summon sent and her bath complete, Sakura tumbled into her own bedbox, asleep before her head hit the pillow.

***

The next two days were a blur for Sakura, but when she woke the evening of the second day, she found her stomach full, her head clear, and her long, lustrous hair brushed and plaited.

Patting the back of her head, she frowned. She didn't remember having the wherewithal to braid her hair before she dropped off after her bath...

An unfamiliar, though delicious taste curled around her tongue and she breathed deeply, focusing on the essence of the individual lifeforce from which she had lapped. She licked her lips. Strong. Her staff had found her someone potently strong to feed upon to help her regain her vitality during her recovery. She would need to express her thanks... and enquire as to whether the individual could be persuaded to see to her needs again. Her body fairly thrummed with renewed vigour and arousal. Hmm. Probably young, then; going by the full-bodied, rich savour, the donor had enjoyed him or herself, too.

A new favourite dish, decided Sakura pleasantly, stretching languidly in her warm, comforting, firm bed—

The hair on the back of her neck rose when the part of her bed beneath her side shifted.

Her nose twitched.

Whirling onto her feet with the grace of a cat, Sakura's fangs dropped into place as her talons burst from her fingertips, her feet spread wide upon the chilly stone floor. All traces of languour evaporated as she stared at the tall man watching her from the other side of her comforter, his eyes hooded and demeanour calm as he watched her right back, his bedclothes loose where the 'v' laced at his clavicle. His contentment had no doubt been why she had slept right through him tresspassing into her private space.

"Recovered, then?" he asked, voice low and gravelly with sleep.

"What are you doing!"

"Napping."

"Go to your room!"

"Have you arranged new linens for me?"

Sakura's teeth snapped shut. "I didn't say you could sleep here," she growled.

Indra's sloe-eyed gaze heated something inside Sakura she couldn't name, and mentally she shook it off, irritable with confusion.

"You said, 'Wherever you wa—'."

"Out!"

He watched her another minute longer before rising and leaving the room without a word.

Trembling with strong emotions, Sakura swallowed, her lips pressed together as she stared at the bed that smelled like the taste on her tongue.

***