Dance with the Devil
Summary: In which trouble-attracting dancer Sakura Haruno (unsurprisingly) stumbles upon three, wayward orphans and unexpectedly takes them under her wing. "So you don't know who I am?" "Should we?" Cue the exasperated sigh that she should really get used to. {dance!AU / Sakura-centric}
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters beside my own.
Warning: Crude language, possible suggestive innuendos
Inner Sakura - SHANNARO!
Sakura talking in her mind - 'SHANNARO!'
~ { Sakura meets Unconventionality } ~
Sakura decided she hated rain.
Partly because she was stuck under the unrelenting downpour of water bullets on the crumbling carpark of her dance studio, but also because the rainwater was going places it should not be going.
In hindsight, she really should've expected that her rather… flighty aunt, for lack of a better word, would 'forget' to pick up poor Sakura-chan once again after the seventh time in five days. The last few times, Izanami had been late - but this time, her aunt had actually forgotten. The forty-seven minutes she had waited under a downpour of rain didn't help the fact that she could have been sinking into a tub of warm water right this very moment.
As much as she hoped that Izanami would come rolling in, in her cherry red convertible and accompanied with her new flavour of the week in the passenger seat, she might pass being squished into the back seat (rainwater and all), where things that shall not be named may or may not have occurred on the leather seats.
Yeah, the rain bullets were more pleasurable than having the fortune to listen to her aunt snuggling up to her new beau.
She really couldn't blame Izanami for everything. After her disastrous break up with her on-and-off boyfriend a couple months back who should've been 'the one', her alcoholic aunt had fallen back into her college days and spent the remainder of her young adult life surrounded with booze, parties, booze and more booze.
But the point was, when the authorities had dropped naive, scared little Sakura into her lap after her parents had passed in an accident, Izanami had been completely unprepared and inexperienced in how to handle a six year old. So instead of sending Sakura to a more experienced distant relative, Izanami determinedly held onto the only memory of her passed sister and chose to raise the pink haired child without knowing how to do anything that associated with caring for a child.
Sakura grew up with an emotionally confused aunt that instead of showering her with love and care, spent her parent's inheritance on expensive gifts for herself and simply let Sakura choose whatever she liked. In result, Sakura had matured much faster than her peers, learning how to cook frozen meals and how to clean after herself and her usually drunk aunt.
But what she also learnt, was how to sneak money out of her aunt's purse to limit the amount of money she spent when she wandered out at night and how to make a hangover for her aunt when she woke up in a daze the next morning.
When Sakura decided to sign up for the dance studio closest to her house after exactly two years of nonstop routine, Izanami had immediately complied - she was abundantly glad to have the brat out of the house for a few hours each week.
The only favour Sakura had asked of her was that she pick her up after dance lessons, to which her aunt had reluctantly agreed to - but it seemed she more frequently 'forgot' to pick her darling niece up from the dance studio after her tragic break up.
Although Sakura had sat Izanami down and told her that she should at least try to pick her up on time, she knew that her aunt was only half-listening as she flickered to sleep not long after their conversation.
So, here she was, drenched and wet in a skin-tight leotard and a flimsy wrap skirt staring fiercely at the entrance of the car park. Her choice of attire had been strongly influenced by Izanami's advice of wearing something 'light', but she also supposed that it was a decision she chose to follow through with. Her aunt's usual ensemble consisted of a skin-tight, light attracting, party dress that allowed free movement, and considering Izanami's choice of venue, the atmosphere was most likely humid and sweaty.
Conveniently forgetting to bring her sweatshirt in the bathroom after helping Izanami mop herself up before she went to the studio was a mistake on her part, but that wouldn't stop her from dripping rainwater all over her aunt's precious Persian rugs when she got home.
She really should've expected Izanami to be late - again - after the first few times, honestly. "What a way to spend my Friday night," Sakura murmured bitterly, scuffing the toe of her lime green sneakers.
The storm that had drifted overhead that seemingly erupted out of nowhere had began to rumble with lightning, striking unrelentingly in the distance. Mopey and soaked, Sakura stared at her dead phone as she faintly recalled Ino-pig sucking away the remainder of her battery by taking a multitude of selfies of herself in ten kinds of filters.
With no communication to speak of and only a handful of change, she marched hopefully to the nearest bus stop. It had been a while since she had actually taken public transportation, as she usually walked or on the rare days that Izanami dragged her unwillingly to the mall.
She generally disliked taking public transport, because her last experience resulted in Ino-pig's not-so-playful taunting of becoming a 'commoner', so she, unwilling to listen to the blonde's jeers, she skipped taking the bus ever again. She really would rather the warm, heated seats of her aunt's convertible, and the fact that her house conveniently happened to be on the other side of town didn't help her decision to take the bus.
But she had no choice but to do it, because Izanami was probably drinking her worries away at a club downtown, helpfully forgetting all her responsibilities - which included of picking up one Sakura Haruno.
As she walked, she immediately noticed that the streets that used to bustle with liveliness and color were deserted with little to no life to be seen. Konoha had recently been introduced to a wave of sleepiness that winter had brought and the flu spread like wildfire.
When she finally reached the flimsy structure of the neighbouring bus stop, she squinted at the time table in hope that she could at least get to a bus top in walking (read: sprinting through the rain) distance of her house.
Staring down at the handful of change she had scavenged at the bottom of the bag, her fists tightened in anger, ready to scream her throat hoarse at Izanami for making her suffer for as long as she did.
Well, maybe she should've realized sooner that her aunt would conveniently 'forget' to pick her up and taken Ino-pig's offer of driving her home. Unwilling to succumb to Ino's taunts of 'becoming a lonely, wet stray', she respectfully declined and chose to wait for someone who she naively thought was just 'late'. Thinking back on it now, she bitterly thought that she shouldn't have put as much trust in her aunt as she did.
After helplessly squinting through the rain she roughly made out that the next bus wouldn't come around until about forty minutes, she reluctantly decided to take the route by foot and prayed that she could get home safely.
About twenty metres out, she faintly heard distant footfalls and scattered mutterings somewhere behind her. She stiffened immediately, ready to clutch her pack for dear life and run for all she was worth through the rain.
Casually tightening her grip on her bag strap, she walked a little faster to ready herself to break out into a sprint. There was slight skip to her step as her stomach churned in a mixture of fear and adrenaline. Sakura risked a glance over her shoulder but only saw three shadowy figures hidden with the fog. Eyes widening at the sudden revelation that they outnumbered her, her stomach clenched tighter with terror.
Go get 'em! Inner hollered, inspiring a flicker of irritation and exasperation as the voice of her inner personality spoke up for the first time in hours.
'Shush!' she hushed mentally, her eye twitching - but secretly, she was grateful for Inner. Something inside her steeled and her footsteps stopped their harried movement. Realizing what Inner was trying to achieve, she screeched inwardly, 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?'
"Who are you?" her voice was wobbly and cracked slightly at the end, but the strength in her voice stabilized as she talked. The movements on the gravelly road were become more distinct as the strangers walked closer. Sakura couldn't move from her position, her knuckles white on her bag strap as she tried to will herself to run, run as far away as possible from these (possible) muggers, but Inner had already taken control.
"Hey!" A pubescent voice called from behind her. A little part of her sagged in relief that at least one of them was her age but the more rational part of her mind yelled, 'He could still mug you!'
Willing herself to turn around, the previously shadowy figures become three, strange-looking boys her age. The one that had spoken was catching up to her still form rapidly, jogging faster than the two strolling boys behind him.
"Hey!" The boy stopped in front of her with a grin, sunshine-coloured hair dripping down over tan face.
"What do you want?" Her voice was frozen with fear as she stumbled back a little, holding her bag behind her pack. "I-I don't have money, okay? Only some change - but, but don't you dare touch me."
The blonde looked confused, damp spikes of hair drooping to one side as he tilted his head. "Money? We don't want money! Wha-?"
"She means if we want to mug her, Dobe." the one on the right of the blonde with dark, spiked hair smoothly cut in. "Do you?" Sakura questioned hesitantly, ready to take off with one suspicious sign.
"Of course we don't want to, Ugly." the one of the left of the blonde' said with a serene smile and a tilt of his head.
"Excuse me?" Sakura felt her face grow hot, "Did you just call me ugly?"
Mugger or not, this bitch was gonna get slapped. She, for the first time in what seemed like forever, wholeheartedly agreed with Inner's violent ways.
"Isn't that what one would call someone if they fit their name's description?"
A deadly, monstrous aura began to grow around her. The others suddenly began to creep away from the pink haired girl, but the one-who-shall-get-double-bitch-slapped stayed in place, his pale face twisting into a wider smile as he stared unflinchingly into Sakura's eyes that were alight with fire.
"So you don't know who I am?" Sakura tilted her head, her damp mop of hair dripping down her shoulder as her personality turned the other way like a flick of a switch. She wasn't exactly going to brag, but she had won three consecutive wins for the Junior female dance solo at Nationals. Even in her soppy state, they should at least recognize her from the newspaper or wherever she advertised. "Should we?" Cue the exasperated sigh that she should really get used to.
"Anyway," the blonde interrupted loudly, waving his arms around as he tried to catch Sakura's attention - not that he needed the help - and tried to distract her before her killing intent filled the atmosphere again.
"What we're looking for is for my pet fox, Kurama!" the blonde said dramatically as if he had spoken a name of a god. His whiskered cheeks widened as an eager smile grew over his tan face, "So? Have you seen him?" Sakura rose an incredulous eyebrow, ignoring Inner's chanting of beating the smart-mouthed pale boy up.
Continuing his rambling even at Sakura's half-hearted attempts of interrupting, the blonde spoke with extravagant gestures, "...you really can't miss him! He's about, like, this big and is firetruck red and he's even stronger than me but don't tell him I said that and…"
"I haven't seen a fox anywhere." Sakura said tiredly, adjusting her bag and ran a hand through her damp, pink locks. The blonde looked slightly put out, but then he brightened once again.
Before he could continue his nonsensical ramblings, Sakura said, "Look, if I see a firetruck red fox, I'll holler, okay?"
Sakura had no intention whatsoever to communicate with such a vibrant human being ever again, but she needed to appease the boy before he could pull her in with his chattering. The rain had finally began to stop and she needed to-
The puppy dog look he just pulled transformed Sakura's dismissal into an irresistible urge to pat his wet blonde head. As soon as Sakura tried to tear her eyes off of his heart-meltingly adorable face, his face contorted into a sneeze.
She suddenly realized he was sick. All of them were sick. The raven haired boy's cheeks were dark and hollow, and the one-who-perhaps-shouldn't-get-double-bitch-slapped's face was so pale that he was whiter than Sakura's extremely light complexion.
But the blonde was the worst - he was shivering, from eagerness she had earlier assumed, from the cold and he had given his coat to the boy who had so easily angered her. His fingertips were growing an icy blue and he looked even colder than she did with only a leotard on.
"You're sick?" she reaffirmed. The blonde immediately stiffened and shook his head, putting on an artificially excited expression, "Nah! Come on, what kind of loser would…"
Sakura shot him a stern look, putting her freezing hands on her hips determinedly. "Yeah, okay," he said, looking a lot more tired than he did before, "We're sick."
The same motherly feelings she had felt when she had taken in the shivering, sick rabbit she had found when she was walking home from school one day had blossomed once again as she surveyed the state the three boys (orphans?) had been put in, which evidently was the result of Konoha's harsh winter conditions.
"Come now," she said primly. 'What am I doing?' she wondered inwardly as she herded them closer to follow her. Even I don't know, Inner's voice echoed as the trio stuttered closer to her. 'What would Izanami think?' now there was a thought that actually mattered. She would probably give us a suggestive wink and say 'go get 'em'.
Sakura somehow agreed with Inner a second time as she lifted Naruto's chin, inspecting how bad his fever was. "You guys are coming with me." she decided abruptly, because dammit, she wouldn't leave three sick boys out in the streets like this.
It didn't matter at this very moment in time if they were secretly muggers, or if they were apart of a gang, or some nonsense like that - they were three sick boys and she would not leave them here to die because of the bloody flu. "Wha-?" The blonde sputtered as she gestured for them to follow her. Even the two dark haired boys beside him blinked in confusion. "You guys are coming with me." she said slower this time, wondering if they were illiterate.
"We got it," the boy who stood to the blonde's right confirmed dryly, "But what do you mean 'coming with me?'" The three wondered if this was a trick; perhaps a game so once she got them to actually think that they were cared for, she would suddenly be gone without a trace - it's not like it hadn't happened before.
"You're staying at my house," Sakura said, hoping that this time they would actually fully comprehend what she said. She nodded, as if reassuring herself and said in a softer tone, "I'll take care of you guys, okay?"
They was purely vulnerability shining in their dimmed eyes - anguish, hope but mostly fear.
"I can run a hot bath," she baited, and her heart wilted as their eyes brightened with the aforementioned 'luxury'. Seriously, these boys were taking her heart and ripping it into tiny pieces.
Like eager puppies, they trailed after her as she slowly rounded a street into downtown. She had purposefully skipped the route that went past the bar that Izanami usually frequented as she knew her way around downtown long enough to get herself and the trio of boys safely into the more friendly parts of Konoha.
With three soaked boys in tow, she instructed them what way to turn or if someone was coming in hushed whispers, just in case anyone would hear. Travelling through the shadows for them was easy, she observed, as they slid into the shadows of an alley between two townhouses, blending effortlessly into the darkness to hide from a passing car.
The rain was slowly dying down into a light sprinkle, Sakura noticed, relieved. Our uniform can't get any wetter, Inner said dryly.
As much as the blonde wanted to burst out in hollers and shouts, the two boys beside him kept him in place with deathly glares and soft spoken insults. Their compatibility reminded her fondly of brothers, but then she stopped cold as a memory of two pink haired siblings, loud and full of brightness, flickered to life in her mind. Morosely trudging down the path that rounded of to her neighborhood, Sakura tried not to even glance at them in fear of bringing up tucked-away memories, hidden from prying eyes.
"Why are we going this way?" the blonde, whose name she learns to be Naruto, whispers loudly when they reach the back gate of her house's incredibly cliché white picket fence. "Hush, Dobe." Sasuke, who she learns to be the less irritable one out of the three, tries to silence the rambunctious boy, who responds indignantly.
Sakura glances at them when she knows that she won't burst into tears, and instead finds laughter bubbling up from her throat as Sai insults both of them with a real, genuine smile on his face to try and alleviate the situation. His attempts are purposefully in vain, she noticed.
Climbing up and over the fence was something Sakura had expertly mastered over the last few years when she had to sneak out in the morning, if she didn't want to wake up a particularly emotional Izanami.
"Easy enough?" she asked, making sure to keep her voice low as to not alert any neighbours, from the other side of the fence. There was a scuffle in response, but the next thing Sakura knew, Naruto had been vaulted over the fence hollering, "TEME!"
"You next, Traitor?" Sai's voice rang cheerily and then he also was thrown over the fence. He landed in a roll, splattering muddy water all over Naruto, who previously had been laughing raucously at his expense, responded in kind in retaliation.
Sasuke boosting himself over with the same technique she had used, landed gracefully on the wet grass, once again splattering water all over Naruto's mud stained face. Naruto sputtered indignantly as Sasuke allowed a small smirk to appear over his usually impassive features, and Sai joined in with quietly amused laughter.
Sakura was already at the back door, smiling wistfully at the familiar dynamic of the three boys. "Hey," she called with artificial cheer, unlocking the door with her spare key, "Who wants a warm bath?" All the boys scrambled into the empty house, drenching muddy water all over her aunt's precious Persian rugs.
Sakura threw her head back and laughed, a strangely melodic sound, as she imagined Izanami's expression as she found out what kind of state they had left her rugs in.
All of them looked back at Sakura, whose laughter they found themselves enjoying, and really looked at her. She looked out of place compared to the intricate furniture and abstract paintings, with damp, pink locks that shone in the setting sun's rays and green eyes that sparkled with life.
"C'mon," she said, amused, as they simultaneously looked in different directions, their cheeks dusted pink, "Let's go get cleaned up."
~ { 1 } ~