Hot lips left a damp trail down the side of [Name]'s throat and along her exposed collarbone. Impatient hands scoured the contours of the woman's body, gripping and pinching and toying with all the things that elicited a reaction out of her. Heavy panting weighed down the woman's tongue, her eyes squeezed tightly shut as her senses became overloaded.
"Sasuke," she breathed, her fingernails raking down the muscular plains of his back and leaving welts of red in their wake. "We need to slow down, someone's going to catch us – ugh!" Without warning two of his fingers slipped into the crevice between her thighs, working almost aggressively against her. He pressed their lips together in a demanding and starved kiss, having no patience for delicacy or gentleness. This was something that [Name] had come to view as normal. There could be no sweetness when your lover was Sasuke Uchiha. When she thought about it hard enough on days when she wasn't feeling quite right, she realized in truth there couldn't even be love.
The young Uchiha continued his violent ministrations against the [e/c] eyed woman until they heard the voice of Karin calling out their names. Sasuke scowled in resentment at their interruption, pulling his two digits free of [Name] and wiping the fluids off on his pants. [Name] felt her head spinning but knew there was no time for her to try and recollect her sanity. Instead she hurried to straighten out her clothes and hair while Sasuke walked away and back towards the camp. She watched him with disheartened eyes. This was the way it had always been.
"Where have you been?" Karin grumbled bitterly as [Name] approached her team's campsite. Her stare flashed to Sasuke who sat casually in front of the fire beside the redheaded woman. His eyes didn't move from the flames, or even show a sign of acknowledgement towards her. The woman cleared her throat, looked away.
"I was looking to see if there were any hot springs around here," she sighed as a random explanation for her absence. "Didn't find any though."
"That's too bad, I would've liked to clean up a little bit," Karin said while leaning back on her arms.
"Yeah, I can smell you from here," Suigetsu jeered under his breath which instantly triggered a fight between the two. [Name] hardly noticed, the weight building inside her chest blocking her mind of her surroundings. She took a seat beneath a tree a few yards away, leaning her head against the trunk to look up at the stars. They were all so bright and familiar; showing their lights even when light seemed impossible. She wondered if Sasuke ever looked at the stars like she did, or ever made wishes upon them that he knew would never come true but tried anyways. Doing that seemed so human and in truth, Sasuke had long been fighting to take out the parts of him that showed his humanity. He didn't want to be like the rest of the world. He wanted to suffer in his pain alone, block everyone else out no matter how realistically he felt they might be able to connect. It almost seemed like a punishment that he'd forced upon himself.
[Name] closed her eyes, her lips forming a hard line across her face and her forehead wrinkling in sorrow. Being with him like this was killing her, she knew, but imagined being without him would be a worse death. She loathed the feeling of connectedness she had towards him when she knew that it was not reciprocated. He would be fine without her. His life would continue on as normal, and she would be the only one choking on the dust he left behind. How many other people had he left behind in his life? How many other people were struggling for air in the cloud of dirt he'd left in his wake?
Suigetsu and Karin had quieted down, and upon opening her eyes she found everyone to be searching for sleep. She looked at Sasuke, at how blank and unexpressive his features were. She'd never seen them any other way with the exception of anger. Not even sadness; he would not even allow himself to express that. Only rage and emptiness. Even towards her.
She wasn't needed here, she realized with a sharp pain to her heart. She wasn't even wanted by most of the team, and the only thing that kept her around really had no preference for if she stayed or went. She got to her feet, knowing what she had to do. Her [e/c] eyes couldn't spare another glance in his direction, so she kept her line of vision down, turned around, and walked away. In her subconscious she knew she wanted him to open his eyes, tell her she couldn't leave and she had to stay. But he didn't, and she eventually found herself too far out to find her way back to him. It was a sickening kind of finalization of her decision, forcing her to either continue her aimless wanderings forward or try and sleep. The latter seemed impossible with the way her mind shouted and beat against her, so she walked on, ignoring the ache in her legs and heaviness in her eyes.
It felt like days to her, but was more closely clocked in at two hours, when she gave way to her exhaustion and settled down in a soft patch of grass. She was tired down to her soul. She realized for the first time that she had nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No people to see or family to visit. Her life had suddenly become entirely meaningless. A heat built up behind her eyes, and as she laid down on her side and curled into a ball, she began to silently cry herself into a nightmare-infested slumber.
[Name] woke up the next morning with a stiffness in her back and an itch to her eyes. She didn't move for a long while, trying to think on what the most logical next move was to make. Find the nearest village, she supposed. Clean herself up, try and find a normal job. Remake herself. Still, even after coming to this conclusion she remained stagnant. That life held no appeal to her. It brought her close to cringing in fact and she was all but repulsed by living such an ordinary, uneventful life. There had been a reason she agreed to leave Orochimaru's compound and go with Sasuke. [Name] had always wanted adventure and freedom, and then there he was, leading her by the hand to the grandest adventure her life had ever known.
She felt tears flooding the backs of her eyes, and she knew if she didn't change her train of thought soon she would start weeping again. So she got up, dusted herself off pointlessly and began her trek once more. Tracking was never one of her strong points (and for that was always secretly grateful towards Karin), making these woods seem like an impossible maze to conquer. She would try and go in a straight line, but in an hour would find that she was passing the same cluster of trees over again. She cursed her completely inept ability to figure proper directions. [Name] ventured on until dusk, where luck would have it – she'd found a lake.
A sigh of relief exploded past her cherry lips, running her fingers through her hair as she approached the water's edge and knelt down to take a sip. It was unbelievably refreshing. She splashed a bit across her cheeks and eyes before deciding to get in entirely. Checking around to make sure there was no one nearby, she undressed and left her clothes in a heap a few feet away from the shoreline. Then she waded into its cool grasp, feeling release with every step deeper she took.
When the water reached the bottoms of her round breasts she sucked in a breath of air and plummeted beneath the surface. Her [h/c] expanded in a lively mass around her scrunched faced. [Name] held the position for a moment before opening her eyes and pushing forward, swimming into the heart of the lake. She kept along the bottom and would occasionally reach out to pick up certain rocks. When she broke for air it was with leisure and purposeful slowness. She was pacing herself, trying to teach her mind to move as softly as her body. All of her thoughts had become too hard and sharp around the edges. They needed lightness, to remember the feeling of not knowing the ground beneath their feet.
[Name] bobbed at the waterline, her thin legs keeping her safe from drowning while her toes kept searching for something else to support her. They didn't trust themselves; as if they needed something else to solidify that she would be okay. She tried to tune the feeling out.
"Well well well, what do we have here?" [Name] whipped her head back around to face the shoreline, seeing three disgruntled and gangly men sauntering towards the stagnant tide. Repulsion and disgust set into the [e/c] eyed girls stomach as her arms instinctively shot up to wrap around her chest. "Looks like we've found ourselves a pretty little thing to have fun with." She snarled in annoyance, hating their arrogance.
"I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken, I have no intentions of having any kind of fun with likes of you lot," she corrected haughtily. The man on the right grinned excitedly, nudging the one in the middle and saying,
"Ya hear that? The bitch thinks this is an invitation!" They all chortled loudly like a pack of bores, and [Name] cursed her nude form and current vulnerability. These guys would have been like child's play if she were better suited to face them. Her eyes darted to her clothes, mind racing of way to get them and put them back on before they really had a chance to process anything. Speed had never been her strongest point though. That was always in Sasuke's hand of cards.
"This is my only warning to you all that I am not a woman to be toyed with. Leave now while you still have some dignity." Though she used the word "dignity" lightly, she thought in truth.
"We ain't goin' nowhere without you sweet cheeks, don't you even worry," the middle-man ensured in a tongue that made her skin crawl.
"She said-" came a voice that caused [Name] to almost lose rhythm and fall beneath the waterline. A bolt of very unique lightning struck out from the trees and pierced the three men all directly through the chest. Sasuke walked angrily into her view, his line of vision not once leaving the trios. "Leave," he growled into the first man's face. There was a moment of disturbing silence that swallowed the area whole before the enraged young man released his jutsu and the others all fell lifelessly to the floor.
"Sasuke," [Name] whispered, beginning to swim closer to him while he in turn started walking out to her. They met each other where the waters came up to their knees in the lake, Sasuke's shoes and pants still on and he entirely uncaring. Her lower lip began to tremble as she stood in front of him, inches apart but not saying anything. In front of anyone else her nudity might've been embarrassing, but he was no stranger to her rawest form. She opened her mouth to speak but before she could get a word out he'd seized her roughly by the arm and was yelling,
"What the hell do you think you were doing?!" Her lips clamped back shut, her eyebrows tensing upward as she felt her intestines tying into knots. He shook her slightly, continuing, "Why would you be such an idiot and wander off on your own like that?! You could've gotten killed!"
"But I-" And just like that he was pulling her up into a frighteningly hard kiss. The action brought tears spring out of her [e/c] eyes. She hadn't even begun to realize how deeply she missed this. Missed him. He went on molding and remolding their lips together for a solid minute, and when he finally pulled away for a proper breath of air she hushed, "Why do you always scream at me like that… I don't mean to make you so angry all the time, I'm sorry…" Sasuke sighed, his eyes closing as he wrapped his arms softly around her and rested his forehead against hers.
"When I'm yelling at you it's not your fault… It's just, I'm crazy for you [Name]. You drive me absolutely insane." She couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, wondering if most likely this were all just a bittersweet dream. "And I need you. Please, don't leave me like that again." The tiny woman closed her eyes, hoping to slow down some of the tears that were beginning to make her cheeks itch.
"Okay," she agreed in such a small voice it was barely lifted to his ears. Sasuke tilted his head down, kissed her again.
"It's not your fault baby, it's not your fault."