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The door opens, and Tayuya does not look up. She knows who it is. She always knows.
“Is the cure ready yet?” Temari asks without even as much a hello, lingering in the doorway. She is uncomfortable inside – tis clear in every way her body holds itself. Tayuya’s shop glitters silver, and the rustle of wind from behind Temari, through the open door, makes the whole place ring. Her wind chimes stir in the breeze, filling the air with lilting music that makes the whole world stop and hold its breath for but a moment, and then the earth keeps turning and the music fades.
That’s when Tayuya finally looks up with a small smile. “No,” she says, and she tries not to smirk. She’s a paying customer, after all. “I told you, give me a week.”
Temari scowls, folding her arms tightly across her chest, but steps in, shutting the door behind her and stopping the faint breeze. “Does it really take a week to compose a song?”
Tayuya sets her quill down on her music stand, lifting one eyebrow at the other. “Have you ever written a song before?”
“…No,” she admits, not meeting the redhead’s eyes.
Tayuya stops resisting the urge to smirk, letting it spread across her face. “Then shut the fuck up,” she says, and that’s when Temari flips her off and storms out to the sound of tinkling laughter behind her.
“Excuse me,” says a voice, the door closing quietly shut behind her, and Tayuya sets down her flute, eyes narrowing at the young woman that stands before her. No – the same age as Tayuya, blonde hair pulled up, wearing clothes that bespoke of wealth, of lineage. “Are you the witch? The Witch of the Winds?”
It’s a catchy name, which is why Tayuya has leaned into it – she rolls to her feet, bending double-jointed limbs in a way so carefully crafted unnatural, and distrust and fear spasms over the other’s face. It’s quickly squashed under a hard mask of determination, and there’s a certain… thing about it that draws Tayuya. She likes fire. Likes spark.
It’s more fun to put out, in the end.
“Yes,” she finally says, after the two gaze at each other for a moment, letting a smile curl the corners of her lips. “That I am. How may I be off assistance?”
The woman’s lips press in a thin line. “I need your help… My brother, he.” She inhales, exhales – a touchy subject, clearly. “He is possessed by a demon… a, a monster. He hurts others and hurts himself and does not sleep, does not eat, just screams and-“ She stops, regains her composure. “Can you drive it from him?”
It will be a challenge, and Tayuya feels the demon that curls within her perk with interest, feels that ice white snake that curls around her heart start to stir. A demon, a monster – it is not always bad, is not always evil. The world does not exist in those terms, anyway, so little being all good and so little being all bad. Yes, if she ever met the one who gave her this snake, she would kill him, rip his face off and devour him whole, but there is no use rejecting a part of oneself.
The snake is hers, though, and she wonders what kind of demon has a hold of this woman’s brother.
“Give me a week,” she says simply. “My magic is of music – give me a week, and I can compose a song that will help him.”
The woman’s shoulders slump in relief before she catches herself, tightens up. “How much do you cost?”
Tayuya shakes her head. “I will negotiate with your brother once I have played – it is only fitting.”
Her brow wrinkles. “Payment after it is all done? That doesn’t seem very-“ She stops herself, because she’s intelligent, but it’s a little too late.
Tayuya chuckles. “You could cheat me, I know – but you won’t.” Her smirk wouldn’t disappate even if she wanted it to, and she blinks lazily at the other like a cat. “You will understand, trust me.”
“I…” She doesn’t want to, very clearly doesn’t want to, but Tayuya does not begrudge her that. “Fine.” The woman sticks out her hand. “My name is Temari. Thank you.”
“A pleasure,” she purrs, and shakes.
The first day – or rather, the second day, it’s the first day of nagging – that Temari comes, she’s at least polite. Painfully impatient, but polite, wanting to see what Tayuya has been doing. She doesn’t… she doesn’t understand the craft, doesn’t understand the careful weaving of magic and music. It’s fine – Tayuya has met very few that do.
(The last one she met that understood music the way that she did, and then taught her the weaving of magic – well, there is a reason she has a snake in her breast and her heart and wherever else it may drift.)
But she hovers and while she is painfully polite she does want to know and attempting to explain slows the entire process down so Tayuya ends up snapping at her and she leaves in a huff.
She hopes – she hopes that is the end of that, and yet she doesn’t. She loves the fire. The spark. The last time she knew one with a fire in her eyes, the one who gave her the snake snuffed it out.
(Tayuya will not let that happen again. Either she douses the flame, or no one does.)
But Temari returns, which perhaps she should expect. Every day, like clockwork. She shows up, she pesters – and Tayuya… understands, in an abstract way. She has no one that she cherishes like Temari clearly cherishes her brother, but if she did, there is nothing that Tayuya would not do for their well-being. Now that she knows what it is to lose, she would never let it happen again.
Still, it slows her down, it bothers her, and one day she cannot work, cannot put quill to paper and she grits her teeth. Takes a breath. And gives Temari a smile, honey-sweet.
“Temari,” she says. “Will you have lunch with me?”
The woman narrows her eyes, suspicious, suspicious. Good. “Why?”
“I have some questions to ask you,” she says lightly, as if this is just a normal interruption of her work, a daily break, and not her needing some way to needle the other, to vent her frustrations because she cannot function otherwise, the snake in her heart needy, needy, needy.
Temari studies her, eyes flinted, steel, fire. “Fine,” she says.
They eat their rice and their fish, neatly, silently, and the snake within her hisses and wants – this isn’t the hunger she needs to satisfy, and she studies those eyes. “So,” Tayuya says, her voice like the thrumming of her chimes, like the grinding of her bones. “Why does your brother have a demon in him?”
The woman chews slowly. Delaying. “Why do you ask?”
“Might affect my song,” she says, which is technically true but she can write without the knowledge, very easily. “How?”
Temari’s gaze fixates on the grains of wood in the table, scraps up through the air and meets Tayuya’s, unyielding, perfect, pained. The snake is pleased. “My father,” she says slowly. “He wanted the power of the demon.”
“Foolish,” Tayuya says, a smile curving at her lips. “You cannot control such.” Temari nods in agreement, not pulling her eyes away, and Tayuya presses, while she can. “Does he still live?” She would not suffer such – or. Perhaps she would, perhaps she has, because she cannot kill the one who has pained her so.
The snake hisses.
“Yes. He was killed.”
“By who?”
She wants to know if Temari did it – if that fire in her eyes encompasses more, encompasses blood on her hands and blood spilling from veins that are also hers, if she will kill family to save family-
But she says the name of the one who put the snake in her heart and Tayuya goes cold.
She has not seen him for- Well. She cannot say for certain how long, because time is inessential and has no meaning when there is a beast beneath your breast, but it has been long enough she does not expect to see him around every corner, that though he remains present in her mind he is not in her life, and for him to be here. To be here NOW.
Temari is sharp. She watches, hard and puzzled and sorrowful all at once. “Do you know him?” she asks. “He was the one who sent me to you.”
Why, she wants to scream, wants to tear the answers from the other, to seize her mind and rip it to shreds, because no matter how strong she may be Tayuya can eat her alive, but she knows that Temari does not hold them. He will keep them close to himself, always, will keep them close and cold and distant from others, and if she rips the other apart now she may never be able to learn.
“I do,” she says simply. From the narrowing of her eyes, the twitch of her cheek, the curling of her fingers, the sharpness of her breath – yes, Temari wants to ask. She can feel the unanswered questions in the tinkle of the chimes, in the flute music in her mind that only she can hear, but Tayuya does not answer them.
They are unspoken, and thus they remain unanswered.
It takes her nine days to compose the song. Temari snaps and snarls and loses every scrap of politeness she had held onto in that two day delay, and Tayuya refrains from telling her off, from telling her that it is her fault that she has been delayed. If she had not been here, had not nagged and looked over her shoulder and worried incessantly for her younger brother, perhaps the witch would have finished it sooner.
That would be a lie, though, which is why the Witch of the Winds says nothing. There is a second song she has written, one that took her three days and sleepless nights – it is not on a paper, not like the one that she holds for Temari’s brother. No, it curls in her mind, in her heart, in her breast, written on the scales of the snake that curls up her neck and whispers in her ear and she knows it feels the fire that the song lights within her.
She’s not cold, for once, no longer ice, but a blaze of burning anger that sends everything alight, every inch of her skin like the desert she walks in next to Temari.
The other woman glances at her. She wonders if she looks fragile, perhaps – the snake’s hunger is overpowering, and she does not feed it enough. She has wasted, she has wasted down to skin and bones, and she knows she is not beautiful.
(She has not been told she was since before the one who fed her the snake stole her beloved, stole the only one who would say such words.)
“Are you okay?” Temari asks finally, which is a question that was expected.
“Fine,” Tayuya says, as though this is not the second thing she has said today, the first being It is done. Take me to your brother. “I can manage the heat.”
“Not what I asked,” Temari says. “You seem… worried.”
Worried is perhaps not the correct term to use, but it is clear Temari does not know what word to use from the way her breath hovers over it, dances around it, pauses before it. It’s alright. Tayuya does not know what word she would use, either, what word to describe the tension thrumming through her and the anger that burns within her and the cool ice of the snake who hungers, hungers so deeply, hopeful that today it will be fed.
“I am fine,” she says, voice forceful, perhaps a little hoarse, and Temari does not ask again.
The trek is hot, and long, and Tayuya wonders briefly how early the other woman must get up every morning to arrive at Tayuya’s at a reasonable hour, but she does not ask. Perhaps if there was another destination in mind, something else waiting at the end, she would have offered to transport them. Use her flute, use her magic, whisk them there in a single drift of the wind – but she needs everything for today.
It will be hard. It’s choking.
Her hand curls around her flute, knuckles white, and Temari says nothing.
They meet Temari’s other brother – whose name Tayuya does not know, has never bothered to listen for it – at the house. Perhaps house is… generous. It is a manor. Perhaps a castle. Tayuya does not know politics, does not keep up with those who rule. For all she knows, Temari could be a princess, a queen, the ruler of a kingdom who goes and begs from a witch.
(She doubts it, but it’s an amusing thought.)
The moment Tayuya crosses the threshold, she can Feel Him. He is cold, aching down in her bones, turning her burning anger into an icy cold flash of fear. She has never been able to face him. Never been able to deal with him, to take her revenge and to feed herself and yet-
And yet.
She thinks she wouldn’t know if she were not searching for him. If she had not been sending out herself, sending every sense out to stretch through the building… if she were not, Tayuya thinks she wouldn’t have known he was here.
His ice is weak. It is melting, it is slipping away from him, and her blazing fire returns anew.
“Witch?” Temari questions, voice concerned, and Tayuya realizes that she has stopped over the doorway, one foot in, one foot out. Temari’s brother looks nervously at her, clear worry for his brother written over his face and yet wariness of this strange witch, and Tayuya takes another step in.
“Take me to your brother,” she says, instead of answering the unspoken question because those get no answers, and the siblings do so.
He is an interesting sight.
They have locked him away, tied him up, wrapped him up to keep him from hurting others and presumably himself. Red hair. Green, pupiless eyes. Tayuya absentmindedly twists a lock of her own hair in her fingers, the mark of an uncontrolled demon, eternally stained upon your soul, and her face twists in a smirk.
It is as she thought. He will never be free, just as she is.
Father? Their father did not do this. The one who put the snake in Tayuya put this demon in him, whatever demon it may be, and she will never be able to get it out without pulling out his whole soul and leaving him a broken, empty shell.
That would only make Temari cry. She may feel the lingering need to douse that fire, to feed the snake that way, but she has no wish to make the woman cry, and that is but a mere snack before the meal that awaits her.
“Give me a moment,” she says, and she walks forward.
The demon in the boy’s body snaps at her. Snarls. It is all demon and no boy and Tayuya wants to know if he even lives, if he is awake inside, and she reaches out one single finger and touches his forehead.
It is bright inside his mind.
For a moment, she is dazzled – but this is not the ice caves of her mind, not the mountains that keep her frozen. It is the heat of the desert, the sun shining down and beating oppressively down, and there is a boy.
He looks how he did before, she thinks, before there was a demon in his body and blood. His green eyes have a pupil, and his hair is brown, much like his brother’s. He is not as thin, no demon eating away at his heart and soul, and he turns away from the sun, turns to look at her with a frown. “Who are you?” he says.
“The Witch of the Winds,” she says simply.
There is no recognition in his gaze, no sign of knowing who she is, but he nods anyway. “Okay,” he says. “Why are you here?”
She hums, one of her songs curling at her lips, thrumming in her throat. “Do you know why you’re here?”
The boy’s frown deepens. “There… It was…” It’s slow, but though he does not verbalize it, Tayuya can see the dawning realization on his face. The horror, the fear, the exhaustion that crosses it. It’s a few seconds of processing and recognition and then he slumps, just slightly, aching weariness written in every inch of him. “You’re here for the demon. Can you get rid of it?”
Tayuya does not answer him right away. “What is your name?” she asks, because she needs the power that names hold. People give theirs away so freely, so foolishly.
He, like every other before him, gives it up with barely a consideration. “Gaara,” he says.
She nods slowly. “Gaara,” she says, testing it out. She can feel the power she holds over him, now, in this mindscape, with his name. She could take control so easily, could rip him to shreds, and yet she holds herself back.
Not out of mercy. Not even out of like of Temari and her fire, though she will still admit that is part of it. But there is something she needs here, something that she so desperately desires.
“I will help you,” Tayuya says. “But I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Say it,” he says, listening cautiously, and she tells him.
Tayuya pulls back, out of his mind, into the waking world, every moment of her talk happening in but a second. She steps back, puts her flute to her lips, and plays.
It is beautiful only to her. A quaking, sonorous sound that aches in every part of her bones. The demon inside Gaara – the tanuki, she realizes now, as its eyes flash – snaps and snarls even more, but it cannot cover its ears, cannot shield itself from her song. Temari and her other brother cover their ears, but remain, and that is strong of them.
It is the song of grinding bones, of monsters that will eat your heart alive and leave nothing behind. Of a hunger that aches deep within her and will ache within Gaara soon as well – of starving while still eating, of being lost while being found. The song brings to mind the brittleness of ice in the mountains, of sands shifting in the desert, and it makes the demon in gaara scream, like a sword scraping over stone, an unpleasantness that curls deep in your gut and makes you ache for hours.
The two humans behind the demons-in-humans fall to their knees behind Tayuya, and still she plays. She plays and she blocks out the screaming, keeps the aching noise within her, plays until she has finished the last verse and Gaara’s head hangs low on his chest.
Temari is sobbing, behind her, and her brother has fainted. Still, the woman claws her way to her feet, brings herself up and staggers over. “Is… Is it over?” she asks, and Tayuya does not answer that question.
It is never over – when you have a monster curling inside you, be it a snake or a tanuki, there is no ending with a demon in your breast.
“Set him free,” she says instead, and Temari does so, wiping tears from her cheeks as she undoes the bindings, as she sets her younger brother free.
“Gaara?” she calls, quietly, cradling him to her chest as they sit on the bed together, and he opens his eyes. Still pupiless.
“T-Temari?” he murmurs, barely audible, and the woman sobs again, clutching at him and holding him and unable to contain her emotions.
Tayuya is either ice or anger and does not understand such an outpouring, no matter the occasional inklings of affection she may feel, but she waits. She gives them a moment, and kicks the other brother into consciousness and watches as he cries, as well, as all three of them clutch each other.
Five minutes. They get five minutes and then she coughs. “Gaara,” she says, and he looks at her. Recognizes her. “Our deal?”
Temari’s face pales. “Deal? What deal?”
Tayuya regards her steadily. “I said I would take my payment after,” she says, and then she lifts her flute to her lips.
The song she plays is a different one, the one stitched into her snake and into every inch of her being, and Gaara rises to his feet. He follows behind her, drifts behind her, conscious and yet not, in control and yet being controlled, and his siblings find themselves unable to move, collapsed to the bed and yet crying out after them.
Tayuya does not hear them.
She guides them up the stairs, following the coldness that seeps through the stone, curls through the air, whispers in her ear and thrums in every inch of her body. She is on right track.
There is a door, in the way, a locked one, and she alters the song slightly, shifts the notes into one of the first songs she has ever learned, and it clicks open. Gaara opens it, and the two drift in together.
The one who fed her the snake sits on the bed.
His hair is lank, black – he has always been his demon, always been in control, and there is no mark of that lack upon him. Tayuya almost hates him for it, but there are much better reasons to hate him. Bandages cover him, scales shedding and falling on the bed, and she realizes.
“You lost your snake,” she whispers, flute falling from her lips. “Someone took it from you.”
He laughs. His voice is hoarse, exhausted, but nothing dims the sharpness in his gaze. “Always the clever one,” he says simply. She does not know if he fancies himself strong enough, if he has not known her hate, or if he is too weak to even try, but he does not move.
“You… you fed him the demon. You were going to take him.” He was going to become Gaara, to devour him and eat him alive. She was to put the demon in its place, to let the power rattle through Gaara’s body, and then the one who fed her the snake would eat Gaara, would swallow down his soul and shed this body and have a new one, fresh one, with the powers he so desperately desired once again locked inside.
It almost makes her laugh. Actually, it does.
Tayuya bends over and she laughs hysterically, tears growing in her eyes and burning anger fading into disbelief, into numbness, into not iciness but a relief because it’s done, it’s finished, everything is almost over with. “You underestimated me,” she rasps through the laughter, and she straightens up and grins at him.
Before he can say a word, she plays. Gaara stills beside her.
The tanuki and the snake unhinge their jaws and devour him whole.
Tayuya hums, and she writes. The song dances over the page, coming into being before her eyes. The snake is full. It is sated, it is complete, and there is no iciness in her veins. Nor is their burning anger, nor is there anything that plagues her but a twitch of the fingers, a glance at the door for one that is not coming, for one that is not there.
It has been a week since she left them. Since she left Temari and Gaara and her brother, both their demons sated. She answered none of Temari’s questions, but gave Gaara a nod and he nodded back – understanding. Acceptance.
There are few who hold demons in them that she understands.
The song is finished.
She inhales, exhales, and she steps outside with her flute. Tayuya does not bring the paper with her – she doesn’t need to. This is a song that she has always known. One that she has known but been unable to write, unable to put to paper for many reasons. Some physical, some psychological, some magical. All true, all real, but now the reasons dissipate in the wind.
The chimes in her house are quiet. They make no noise, drift in no wind.
Tayuya lifts the flute to her lips and she plays.
This song is beautiful, she thinks – not just to her, but to anyone that could hear it. It flits through the air. It curls around the trees, coaxes them just a little higher, brings the colors of flowers just a little brighter.
Snow drops off a branch, far out of sight, in another land. A pool of water in the desert grows just a little more, laps at someone’s feet. A boat close to tipping rights itself, and a sailor breathes. Deer perk their heads up, startling their handler, and a cake emerges from an oven, beyond perfect.
And far away, in a place that Tayuya has been trying not to think of, the empty puppet that was once Kin Tsuchi closes its eyes and crumples into dust.
Tayuya pulls the flute from her lips. She is crying, she realizes – salt water tickling at her lips, a flavor she has long forgotten, is scarcely familiar with. Silently. Not a sound escapes from her.
“That was beautiful,” says Temari from behind her, and when Tayuya turns, her tears catch the other woman off-guard. Her eyes widen, stunning, firey, but unsure. “Are… Are you okay?” she asks.
This time, Tayuya doesn’t blow her off. There is no tension in her body, no anxiety thrumming through her, and the witch wipes at her eyes and gives her the smallest of smiles. “I will be,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
Temari wavers, as if unsure whether she should accept that answer – which is funny, when it is the truest Tayuya has been in so long – and then moves on. She is purposeful, always, and her hesitation never lasts more than a few moments. “Gaara needs help,” she says. “With the demon.”
Tayuya arcs a brow. “I cannot rid him of it,” she says. “What I have done is the most I can.”
“I know,” Temari grimaces, and Tayuya wonders how long Gaara had to explain that, how long he had to tell her of something that beats deep within his bones. “But he can’t sleep, still, and he struggles with it. Can you come help him?”
It seems… odd. He should be able to, even if he suffers from ailments like lack of sleep. He should be able to, and Tayuya squints at her. “Is that the only reason you came?”
There is no sputtering. There is no laugh and a blush, like Kin may have done once – because despite the fire in their eyes, Kin and Temari are two very different people. “No,” Temari says instead, steady. “I came to see you.”
She does not pull her gaze away, flinted steel and hard, and Tayuya is intrigued. “Oh?” she asks.
“Is it too hard to believe I want to spend time with you, too?” she asks, and Tayuya laughs.
It is not a hysterical laugh. It is not a laugh filled with tears. It is a genuine, true laugh like she has not done in many years, and Temari’s eyes go soft. “Perhaps not,” Tayuya says, and the smile she gives her is soft in return. She enjoys the steel in Temari, but she thinks she will also enjoy the softness. “If you want my time,” the witch says. “Then I have a price. What will you give me?”
Temari pretends to consider. She pretends as though she does not already have an answer, and it makes Tayuya’s quiet heart come alive, to beat for the first time in too long. “How about… a kiss?” she offers.
Tayuya laughs again. “Oh?” she asks, and saunters closer. “If I get a kiss,” she says. “You will not be able to get me to leave. I may eat you alive.”
“You can try, Witch of the Winds,” Temari says, flinty and steel and soft all at once.
The snake is quiet. It is full, and there is no hunger to her, no ice in her veins, no fire burning. “My name is Tayuya,” she says, giving her the power, and she kisses her.