Jealous gods

When a coup takes the lives of the king and the rest of the royal family, Sakura, the sole surviver, escapes to the edge of the world with Kakashi to strike a bargain with an old god. Her worship in exchange for his power. She's warned he's a dark and jealous god, but that's not enough to sway her.

"Let me wear your name like a kiss on my throat, let me roam the world with the freedom of your patronage. The earth is your alter and I am the incense that beckons you here. Make me new."

When Sakura first struck her bargain with the god from the void her last and most loyal retainer warned her once and only once. Kakashi knew as well as any other empire citizen that she was as good as dead any other way. They might as well be on the run with the noose from their hanging ropes trailing behind them, draped like jewelry around their necks.

"He's a dark god, my dear. Don't make the mistake of thinking him as capable of kindness as any mortal man."

"I don't," Sakura answered easily.

Kakashi swallowed down the rest of his complains. He knew better. No one had been closer, no one more faithful or more loyal than the old hound master. He had lost everything when he ran with her, when he saved her from the execution that left the rest of her family wearing red stains around their necks and little else.

Over a hundred corpses later, they were at the edge of the known world, tasting salt in the air as it crashed with the waves against the black cliffs. Neither knew how much longer they would be able to evade their pursuers. If the masked guard didn't kill them on the road, the elements of the godwilds would. It was worse than being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Sakura chuckled and tried to play off her decision like something silly. "Who's to say this will even work. Don't you have to be interesting to win such favor?"

"You'll not have any reason for concern should you make this choice," Kakashi sighed. "You're the heir of a slaughtered house, the niece to the usurper king and the daughter of the fallen emperor. What wild god wouldn't want a boon with you? Even objectively speaking, you have to see that for yourself."

"Then there's no use in putting it off any longer."

Sakura stood and passed Kakashi to where the slanted doorway hung half open, too warped to close all the way. She pushed it aside and stepped out onto the deck of the ancient ship moored on the rocks. It was broken into quarters that existed in various forms of decay. She heard Kakashi at the door but waved a hand over her shoulder, signaling him to stay behind.

It would be bad if he got caught up in her own heresy.

Sakura pulled the sealing stone from her coat pocket and then set it down before placing a scrimshaw icon of a the Mother beside it. There were more pockets on her coat she pat down for the rest of her offering. The last of her food, her mother's pearls, blood from a cut on her hand, and then her own tears.

The sky was a dark sort of gray overhead and when the wind blew it cut through her. Silence stretched on and Sakura took one last deep breath before screaming as high and long as she could. She shredded her voice for that desperate note begging for attention. Her voice pitched high, held, and then fell with a tumble into her summoning song. She broke off her bonds with the rest of the world and made herself the final offering.

"Let me wear your name like a kiss on my throat, let me roam the world with the freedom of your patronage. The earth is your alter and I am the incense that beckons you here. Make me new. Make me the thing that cleans your feet with my hair and weeping. Make me your chosen, god from the void."

Then she spoke his name and the sky split open.

When she opened her eyes again the wreck of the clipper ship was gone. The sky wasn't sky anymore. She turned and saw more of the new world for what it really was, but only grew more confused. Dark whale fish drifted through the sky, cutting through black clouds and then dipping low through them, out of view. Fragments of black rock drifted through the air without concern for the laws of gravity. Shards broke off and drifted back together, some like driftwood caught in the waves on the shore, others like the outer edges of a lung's breath.

Sakura stepped forward, testing the surface under her shoes, daring one more step before stopping again. She was in another being's world- that much was apparent. But where was her host?

"Someone should have warned you about me."

Sakura turned around once more and saw the broken hull of a far older ship. The dark god lounged off the edge, black cloak tails dripping into gray mist at the edges. Like the stories said, he was pale and beautiful with the darkest eyes and hair just as black. The front of his cloak sagged open and showed off the upper portion of his chest where a single leather cord rested with his icon dangling at the end. Sakura wore a similar icon under her own tunic and in his world it burned against her skin.

"I've never been good at listening to others."

"Apparently. You're at the edge of the world. This is no place for you."

"That's why I sought you out, dark one." Sakura dared another step. He didn't flinch. Sakura swallowed, tasting cotton all down her throat as he watched her with eyes that never blinked and never wavered. "I'm too soft to survived in the world as it is. I must be made new."

"Some would argue that is not the wisest of choices."

"It's hardly a choice at this point."

"You always have a choice," he replied with the first hints or ire salting his tone.

Sakura din't look down and she didn't cower. "I do, but there are others who don't, and if I have to change so they have their own voice then so be it. I've been soft long enough. It's time I grow up."

His chin tilted upwards and he watched her, unspeaking until the mists at his ankles swelled and engulfed him enterally before dissipating just as fast. He unfolded out of a new cloud mere meters from her, standing on nothing but empty air.

"You make this bargain and there is no turning back. You share the burden and the yoke of my discipleship. You do not know its weight and you can not know its cost, yet you still seek it?"

Somewhere far off the whale fish moaned, singing their song to one another in deep and mournful notes.

"I have nothing and no one to cling to but you. I am no one but the one who sits at your feet," Sakura vowed, knowing the ancient words in spite of the warnings. Kakashi's concern was a thorn in her heart but she knew how to grow callouses around the things that hurt her.

Sakura knelt with both of her hands flat on the stone. She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

"You will have no friends," he whispered, sounding closer than before.

"Then let me cling to you."

He touched her face, sliding his hand under her chin to tilt it back. So close she could see herself reflected in his eyes like black mirrors. She looked so small and dirty and young in his eyes. What was there that he saw as worthy? He was a god of the wilds and she was a mortal without even a name to cling to anymore. Her tears slipped free and his hand moved to touch one. His fingers traced the trail up to her eye and pulled away to suck her tear from his finger.

"You are full of salt."

"I'm empty of everything else," she laughed, sounding pathetic in her own ears. "What will you do?"

"I've not had a disciple in such a long while," he replied. "I can't ever remember taking one on by choice."

"Weren't you lonely?"

"I know no such thing."

"Of course." Maybe she was foolish to ask him such a question, but it seemed so natural.

He stared down at his hand and then at the tear trails on her face and then drew back his hand. Mist swirled up thick around him. His edges blurred. The whale fish moaned far off behind him, and there was a note of thunder even further back.

"What would you seek from me, that I might make you mine and join you into the fold of my covenant? Speak your ambitions and make them known."

Kakashi had asked her the same thing only days ago. Days ago when they had the first opportunity to bed down somewhere dark and safe and talk without the worry of someone overhearing them and turning them in to the first set of ears that could carry a whisper. He had asked her if she was alright, if she was hurt anywhere, and it took forever to convince him she was fine. Cuts and scratches weren't on her radar.

But then he had asked her what she wanted to do. She wanted to get somewhere safe and he agreed that was important, but not impossible. There would be days that came after she got the safety she wanted. What would she want after that?

The guilt ate at her and she closed her eyes to answer because she knew she wouldn't be able to stand the look on his face.

"I want to balance the scales again. I need to take that man off the throne. There will be no peace for the refugees if he has his way."

When Sakura looked up at the god from the void she forced the same words out. "Please give me your power so that I might make low my enemies. It is my right."

"Lambs were not made for war."

"Make me something else then."

So he did.

He reached for her face again and pulled her to him. Sakura followed his pull without resistance and grabbed for the front of his cloak as he bent his face down to her and fit his mouth over hers. She felt cold all over and there was the taste of winter on his breath, and then the tang of salt. She closed her eye and nearly melted for him as another hand reached up to cradle her skull through the kiss.

Her whole body burned with frostbite and then she pulled back sharply as something ripped across her chest. She staggered back, hands holding the space just above her breast as a dark mark turned the skin black with bleeding that spilled down over her breasts. Sakura clawed the rest of her shirt away to see the symbol at the end of her necklace shattered and its likeness carved onto her chest.

He leaned down at touched the mark and Sakura flinched. It was sore and tender and still wet with her own blood. She forced her eyes to watch. He trailed his fingers through the blood and then he reached for his cloak to drag through the blood, wiping it away, which was an odd thing to do she thought.

"I feel funny."

"You should," he hummed.

Sakura blinked, squeezing her eyes before opening them wide. The world shifted and then settled, seemingly making more sense than it had when she first woke up. The vertigo at the back of her head was gone and the weird warping of gravity seemed more natural than odd. She felt…at home in the void.

"What did that do?"

"I gave you a part of myself."

Sakura blinked, not knowing what that meant for a god. Any human who told her the same thing would be crazy, but she had to remember he wasn't human.

"How?"

"I take disciples so rarely for this reason. You are a part of me and I am a part of you. There is nowhere you may go where I can't follow. You will always be mine, unto death and then beyond that."

"And you will always be mine?" Sakura asked.

"…Yes. Always. This is the promise of a god."

"Then I will call you as mine."

Sakura reached up for his face and pulled him back so they were level and close enough to see the reflection in each others eyes. She stepped up onto the air and gravity lessened around her. Her hair, one a mess in an off the shoulder braid, drifted free around her face. Her eyes turned black like his as she swelled with new magic .

"Itachi."

Well, you saw the chapter, don't look so surprised. You're getting a Yandere Itachi. Have fun. I've seen too much fun Yandere art work to not write something like this.

The fic is finished I'm just releasing it in spurts as I go back to edit it, so you don't have to worry about reading something that isn't finished. I'm just terrible about editing my stuff and it takes forever.