Chapter Text
Date: January 25, 1714
Born: June 25, 1689
Age: Five and Twenty—25
Country of origin: 13 Colonies
Memories? No, the true death—it waves and breaks through her lulled unconsciousness and the misery that swelled deep within seems to pop. She rests easy—but is she dead? At last?
Wait—
—last images flickering of a bridge ruminate in her darkened stupor. No! No, what’s happening here—
—it wasn’t supposed to be this way, she was supposed to die on impact.
Looking from the outside she sees herself. Ignoring the wind pushing in opposition—she continues to climb.
Poised upon the topmost bridge post. Shoulders taught, arms up. She falls backward. The wind laps her hair, the moon instructs her to dive, and the water’s icy stinging caress touches her back. It cradles her like a mother does a fussy babe, carefully.
She sinks deeper.
Pushing all the air out of her lungs with a scream her lungs hollow out. Wasting remaining energy, she thrashes to curb the instinct to resurface. It’s frigid, the crisp water seeps through her nostrils, it must be below 38 degrees.
She waits.
Certain that this would be the final descent. Her encore. Lake’s gentle lips suck her further down, her consciousness falters in and out. Finally. The reprisal of choosing when she dies, and not by someone else’s hand—
—but, nOoOo, it turned out to be a joke—and at her expense.
She just had to fall through a fault line below the water's surface, an omniscient vortex chewed her up and spit her out. As if she was poisonous. It would have her free-falling topside through another world. One where she had no place and nothing to cling to.
Tumbling and screaming. The air is knocked out of her lungs from the velocity of shooting out the sky like a star and abruptly breaking through a surface of water, again. She sinks once more. Closing her eyes voluntarily—
—hopefully, this is it.
Watching from outside consciousness—a mere vestige observes the scene unfold. A dream-like state she finds comforting, it’s not living but it’s not death.
The residual energy is hastily vacuumed up and cautiously put to rest within her—so, she’s not dead?
Cloaked figures watch the helpless girl free fall, and one of them sprints through the water. Effortlessly she’s fished out and moored to the shoreline faster than death’s cold hands could grasp her.
Water burns her lungs, throat, and eyes—is she…, was this the afterlife? Is she divine now?
What feels like rose petals brush and pillow over her lips—something else—a thumb? Presses her chin and opens her mouth. Her neck is craned up and two fingers slide from behind her ear just below her jawline. Her airway rests unrestricted as two soft puffs of air jut down her throat entering her lungs, half extending them.
Barely discernible, there is faint grumbling—
…how do you not know CPR? Move—I got this. A rough male’s voice breaks through her unconscious.
…I thought it was two breaths first… A calm and comforting male voice speaks.
…Who cares?!! I got it from here! The first voice speaks again. It’s hoarse and agitated.
No, it’s two breaths first, Kisame. The second voice, she likes this one.
…27…28…29…30… The first one counts out and takes two deep breaths, pushing hard into her lungs.
A searing pain radiates throughout the tiny air sacs that are filled with fluid. And she takes her first breath four minutes after drowning.
And then vomits water violently all over one of them. Faint complaints fill the background, her eyes stay shut—purple-lipped and groggy, she tosses to her hands and knees, gasping for air. She has no time to adjust to her surroundings. The dress she is wearing clings to her skin like a wet blanket weighing her down. Ringlet curls wrap her neck in a choke hold. Coughing wildly—she cries out, hyperventilating as she shivers from near hypothermia.
Two beady fish like eyes stare at her. Looking opposite two more sets of inky black eyes fall on her. Heady and sick, she leans over and falls unconscious.
If she’s alive—then she’s not dead.
Aiding and abetting criminals in killing innocent people and harvesting spiritual deities wasn’t the sort of afterlife Celeste had envisioned. If one could even call this an afterlife—she was hoping for darkness. Nothingness. To be cast away and forgotten about, even trying to play her hand in death was fruitless. The gods were not having it with her.
She would spend weeks asunder torment and intimidation at the hands of a man whose name was an oxymoron in and of itself—Pain. She would have the farthest and deepest parts of her mind's privacy invaded at the hands of a weasel, unironically named—Itachi.
They would find nothing.
No prior memories other than her falling into their world, nearly drowning, and being resuscitated by Kisame—a literal shark.
And the irony that a shark swam from land, fished Celeste out, and brought her back to life—well it was nothing short of a miracle. It must be Opposite Day here every day. It was a cultural shock the first few weeks. So many personalities thrusted themselves at her. She didn’t believe what she was seeing, even if her own eyes saw it.
Something she was all too familiar with. Except people did believe in her—and feared her even more. They hunted her. As a trophy. Condemned her with Christians only love—hate.
Hag. Witch. Heathen.
Vile.
But what was absolute—she was useless to the Akatsuki. Merely dubbed a ‘civilian’—tragically, she became nothing more but a menagerie in their presence. A caged exhibit held behind moist and stuffy stone walls. Biding her time until she would eventually meet death’s true kiss at the hand of her captors.
Though Celeste hadn’t yet—she’d eventually consider in truth she didn’t long for eternal darkness.
Locked in her room like a mentally disturbed child—just as her aunt had done to her cousin, she had nothing. No one. Just four walls, a bathroom, and two doors. Unlike her cousin though, Celeste was cherished growing up—her grandmother had sheltered her, but she never went without, not to this extent. Though two different sides of the coin, Celeste imagined this is what her cousin's upbringing was like.
Moister percolated through the air, precipitating on the walls of her subjugation. The whole place smelled like mold, wet rock, and dirt. Was this what living under a rock was? Being confined in a space so suffocating and small. The dust hung thick, caking her nostrils and plugging one side of her nose when she slept at night. This was her undoubtedly worse than what her cousin Anne lived in.
She did what she could to keep from unsettling the dust. She could just wisp it away, but would that be too conspicuous?
For fear of being caught, she used no magic here—at first. These people seemed to hold a higher caliber over her abilities. Whether it was magic itself or whatever else, she didn’t ask when the tall half-naked man, Hidan, brought her three squares a day. Although he had, on numerous occasions, tried to charm her it was only for the sake of his religion. She despised all religions. Religion was the reason she was reduced to nothing more but a caged bird in her universe, and it certainly would play no part in her caged existence here.
A patron of her time, she longed for some sort of theatre—be it reading or drawing, she was going stir-crazy in this room. She kept time etched on the wall since the second day and on her third month in—a new prospect edged its way into her room. A man of porcelain brought her meals this day, Hidan was out on a ‘mission’ he told her. Good—she didn’t like Hidan.
She had asked if there was anything to keep her busy, that she feared being on the brink of hysteria, and she would likely succumb to this delirium if she sat idle much longer.
For the last meal of her day, she was served a book and her usual meal. A rice ball, two spring rolls, and either fish or chicken as protein. Usually accompanied by a dipping sauce. It was getting redundant, and it was the bare minimum to keep her alive.
Sasori was the porcelain man’s name, and he had taken word with Pain on shinobi law regarding prisoners of war. When she probed about what war, Sasori said it hadn’t started yet, but it was inevitable at this point. Not capable of disclosing any further information, she took the book and muttered her thanks through tearful words.
She stuck out in this place. She was told by Deidara, who brought her lunch once, her speech pattern was remarkably old and timely—that she mocked Itachi’s modesty—she sounded boring and lacked the creativity Itachi excreted.
He clearly never read any books in his short and sad existence.
And if her mannerisms hadn’t given her away, her clothes did. Dressed in semi-mid 1700s period attire, her black gown runs the full length of her body, covered by a dark cherry cloak and high buttoned boots. Hair auburn brown, eyes dark chocolate. Aside from being not of their world, Pain even went so far as referring her to a Warring States wretch when trying to key together her existence. It didn’t hurt her feelings; she had been called much worse strapped to a stake as deaths hot fiery breath danced near her feet.
The ‘family’ that had taken her in called themselves the Akatsuki. Nothing more than a bunch of outlaws and outcasts. Subservient to a misguided purpose—she learned bits and pieces from Deidara’s loose lips.
They were the worst kind of believers—faithfully blind.
Their god?
A man behind the curtain. Any deity who hid themselves was false, even Celeste knew that, though just like the religious nuts from her past, they too were far down the rabbit hole.
On the fourth month of her captivity, she was given leeway to roam the underground barracks, except for the room with large doors. It was off limits. During this time, she became acquainted with the remaining inhabitants and found the majority of them just as unsavory as the first. Save for Konan, Sasori and Itachi—Tobi, well, he was a paradox in his own way.
Tobi was childlike in nature, he often would float through the walls of her room, reciting riddles that had no means of solving. She threw books at him for target practice, and he absorbed them, spitting them back at her in a fit of laughter. And Itachi showed no interest in conversation, he often shared sweets or tea when she was in the kitchen, but her one sided conversation fell on deaf ears most of the time. Maybe once or twice he would nod back, she took note that he was mostly detached from the rest of them. A bird of his own feather, he didn’t flock with the rest.
The others… well she did not like the remaining few of them. At all. Especially Hidan. He was more a threat to her than the whole lot of them. His god was real—and it terrified her. He was immortal through his subservience to his god and as long as he held sacrifice to Jashin, he would never die. One taste of her blood was a risk, it might have his god spilling truths she kept hidden from them.
She kept her distance, but a close eye on him through a familiar she made acquaintances with that roamed the corridors of her confines.
A cat.
Of all the evil that seeped through their walls, a damned cat held higher regard than they did for one another. It was extremely contradictory to have Pain threaten the removal of your eyelids for being in his way, only to see him squatting down to pet a cat minutes after you have been threatened by his wicked eyes. Ominous was the cat’s name, she found it suiting of her situation.
She did not let the corners of her mind wander on what was possible and what was not—she had seen explosive art, Kakuzu stitch himself and Hidan back together. Sasori, who turned himself into a puppet, and Konan, who was capable of littering the air with tiny pieces of paper—that physically were made of…Konan. Lingering on too many what ifs only left her with more questions than answers. Answers that no one would give, and answers to questions she did not want in the first place.
And when she fancied a risk one day, she tried cursing Hidan—testing the ability of his immortality. Though it seemed Celeste could not get the proper technique without Hidan seeing her, all that happened was a bloody nose and few curse words. But it was still something. He was none the wiser and thought it only the spring's pollens.
Finding small ways to entertain herself became a necessity. Whether it be puffs of smoke that came from nowhere or illusions of creepy crawlers—jump scaring Deidara more than once, she grew bored after a while. Deciding she would bide her time until escaping their clutches was malleable, and with nothing to do—
—she stayed quiet.
Quiet in a universe where her otherworldly possessions did not exist to keep her company—they lay dormant in her universe, and her sister, Vivian, undoubtedly scavenged through them like a vulture the first week of her disappearance. What could she have possibly done to deserve the same cursed fate twice? Could she not just die correctly the first time?