This was written for sasusaku_month on livejournal, with theme: Alternate universe & prompt: burning/ignite. Originally just one chapter, split due to length. A little rough because I wanted to get it out before the sasusaku_month deadline, so I'll probably go over it again later.

Warnings: medium violence, spoilery warnings at the bottom. Believe it or not, writing this way (both the style and the idea) is completely new to me, so feedback would be appreciated.

Humanity, it's a Fragile Thing
By icecreamlova
Part One

- : -

Here it comes it's all blowing in tonight

Burning on the bridge, turning off the lights

Here on the run I can see it in your eyes

- Mat Kearney, All I Need

- : -

Sasuke wanted to keep driving late into the night, until they reached what used to be the state border, but Sakura put her foot down when they'd passed the third town two hours back and showed no signs of stopping. She wasn't very familiar with the territory - wide, expansive plains of grass, where the sky still had something of a hint of blue, the sun was more than a bright spot in a sea of grey, and she could almost imagine that the world wasn't going to hell - but she did know that she didn't want to stop at those motels that rose abruptly out in the middle of Nowhere, Earth, like a sore thumb that screamed 'Want to get stabbed in the middle of night? We are here to help!'

"No," Sasuke said.

"Unlike you, and like most human beings," Sakura said, "I need to sleep. And drink. And use the bathroom. Bladder bursting is a real phenomenon, you know. You have no idea how messy it is to clean up, in a hospital. Now, in a car-"

Sasuke's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The sky was growing indigo-dark (and Sakura still hadn't grown used to the conspicuous absence of hazy yellow lights on the sides of the road) but Sakura could imagine the cold, remote expression on his face as he said, "We can stop briefly for that."

Sakura leaned idly against the window, the vibrations from a short stretch of gravel making her head buzz and teeth rattle. "You are disgusting."

"We don't have time for this," said Sasuke, exasperated enough to sound it.

"Rubbish," Sakura retorted, watching as the crescent moon slipped fully beyond the horizon. "You just want more revenge. Like it's going to make you happier than the last time you went after it." Under its cold light, twisted hunks of rusty metal - normally concealed in daylight by the unending waves of prairie grass - gleamed like the silver in the pack squatting on the worn back seat. As short as the structures looked from a distance, they seemed to loom with ghosts - jagged fingers of metal clawing at the stars, like a last attempt to tear down the aerial strikes that had turned them from buildings into skeletons.

She shuddered, and tore her eyes away, just in time to meet Sasuke's as his gaze flicked to hers. She could just make out the thin gash of his mouth, edges turned downwards. The scarlet bleeding into his irises was very apparent, emerging from the deep shadows, and they were not friendly.

"Fine," she said. "Whatever. We're still stopping. Look. There." She gestured, as though it were a necessity to point out the only point of light on the horizon that wasn't three hundred thousand kilometres away and shaped like a banana. "Either that, or you're going to meet your opponent sleep-deprived enough for an ambush. I'm not using my skills to keep you awake and alert."

Sasuke didn't reply, but just as she was about to raise her voice again, the car began slowing down. (And not because of lack of fuel either, which had been one of her nightmares when Sasuke told her he had planned absolutely nothing about his trip except "kill Madara.") With barely a bump, Sasuke left the road for the stretch of bare dirt twenty or so metres from the block of buildings, pulling up in a gap between two of the four cars already parked there.

If Sakura were the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth, she would have chosen any sort of motel but this. Three square-shaped blocks of rooms, two doors to a block, crouched ten or so metres from a slightly larger, similar one-storey building that looked like reception. From a distance, they looked like off-white cubes poking out of the grass. They were all sharp edges and right angles, flat roofs, white-washed but otherwise undecorated, as though the builders had abandoned their job in disgust once they'd seen the preliminary results. The light from reception was unexpectedly sharp after driving in the dark, but if she squinted, she could see a desk, and a flash of movement.

There was a battered sign a hundred or so metres away that was illegible under the moonlight, but Sakura was certain it had one of the cheesy-creepy Welcome messages on it.

Sakura was not, in fact, the sort to complain about getting what she wanted, but she still felt for the knives tucked at her belt and ankles, and said, "Stabbed in the middle of the night."

She was wrong only because the vampires lodging there favoured their teeth over using knives.

- : -

The receptionist was one of those bland, bored sorts with a face in danger of being forgotten within two minutes of terminating the conversation. Sasuke and Sakura took five minutes to enter after they'd actually stopped - three minutes to check their packs and the equipment in Sakura's, and the other two arguing over who and how they'd pay. As Sasuke put it, neither of them had the receptionist's gift of being forgotten, and the effects of being tracked swung between being a nuisance and a danger. In the end, Sakura let him pay by cash, reminding herself that he had, in fact, stopped for the night.

She hummed idly as she waited, shifting the straps cutting into her shoulder and rubbing her arms. (Sasuke's bag wasn't nearly as heavy: he could create fire all by himself, and didn't need the heavy instrument she carried.) A chill had settled in, one she hadn't noticed in the car, in Sasuke's close proximity - specifically, in close proximity to his ability to generate heat, an offshoot of the fire affinity his dead family had made famous. Sakura was dressed in old jeans, a scarlet jacket sporting a white circle on its back, and a T-shirt that begged, "Ask me what knockout means." It had been fine for the sheltered depths of the city where Leaf was located; it wasn't nearly enough to hide her against the wind, which tore away her body heat with the same enthusiasm with which it scattered her tuneless notes.

The jiggle of the bell made her look back and sigh in relief. "About time."

Sasuke's glare might have raised the hairs at the back of her exposed neck. The corners of Sakura's mouth lifted as she followed him to the block of rooms farthest from the road, deep in the shadow of its neighbour.

Except it wasn't Sasuke's glare that was making her breath stutter and hiss, or her skin prickle. It was the tingling in the air that any chakra-user worth his or her salt learned to identify.

Movement flickered in the corner of her eye. She lifted her eyes from Sasuke's back just in time to see the stiff, white-backed curtains in the middle house shuffle. The flash of a pale face, or maybe it was a hand, as the slit of soft light between the two halves disappeared. Her hand clenched around her pack's straps. Her muscles were tense enough that she could tear a ligament if she wasn't careful, and she could not recall when she had stiffened.

"Sasuke," she breathed, but did not say more.

He nodded, minutely. Sakura was not always able to read his expressions in dim light, but she would know his minute postures, his gestures, even if she couldn't see them.

It seemed to take forever for Sasuke to unlock the wooden door, as old as the lock appeared to be - like the rest of the building, the elements had turned the initial white into worn yellow, and some of the paint was chipped off around the hinges. Its foundation was spotted in places with what looked like globs of dried clay, which did not make her feel any better. Her hands shook with impatience; it was exceedingly difficult not to give into the urge to look backwards, and confirm that no, red eyes were not in fact boring into her neck with ill-disguised hunger. She breathed a sigh of relief when Sasuke finally got the door open, though her hands tightened around the knife in her belt, loosening the sharp blade from its sheathe, and Sasuke's deceptively casual gesture of reaching back to adjust his pack told her he was doing the same.

Sasuke took a cautious step forwards, and then another, into the darkness of the room. Sakura's senses told her that no-one hid inside, but it never hurt to be absolutely certain, and there was something tingly and heavy about the air in the room, so she stayed back; she fought best in open quarters. Tensely, she waited for a signal from Sasuke, or some discernable shifting in the quality of the shadows.

The lights blazed on to reveal the room was perfectly empty; Sasuke stood by the switch, his eyes fading back to their natural uninterrupted black. He had dropped his pack in one of the corners, and rather than the knife he'd palmed, now held a candle in one hand. Sakura eyed it as she scurried quickly in, shutting the door firmly behind her before she gave into the temptation to investigate more.

The moment the door shut, Sakura tilted her head towards the wall that separated them from the other suite of rooms in that block. Sasuke shrugged an 'I don't know', forming a quick series of hand gestures that lit the candle with a soft puff: he was probably going to check. The hiss of Sakura's knife sliding out of its sheathe was the only sound she made as she headed towards the adjoining sets of rooms (a bathroom with a tap that dribbled clear water, a bedroom with two beds and a wooden dresser), but her effort was wasted; they were both empty. Upon her return to the main room, she saw a hint of a smile on Sasuke's face that told her without words that they had no neighbours (either that, or he'd flamed them to death, but she hadn't heard any screams); she nodded to him.

"D'you think they'll bother us?" Sakura asked, slipping her knife back into its sheathe and nudging her bag beneath the table in one corner - blowing out Sasuke's candle, which he had set on it, just in case. "Or can I forego sealing the rooms? I want to sleep."

Sasuke hesitated, which was still a surprise despite the week they'd spent travelling together. "There's at least three of them," he said eventually, rummaging through his pack for ink. "At least one of them will probably want blood."

"You're allowed to say if you don't know something," Sakura said, a bit less dryly than she had intended, hands on hips. Grimacing, she ran a hand through her tangled pink hair, which could probably make the newly risen run with terror.

"Weren't you the one who said that liars go to Hell?" Sasuke answered, rising with ink, which he entered the bathroom to mix.

Sakura sighed. She was. She took the opportunity to examine the main room more closely. Unlike the bathroom and bedroom, both of which had nothing more than bare necessities, the main room was actually decorated - a bookcase leaning against one of the outer walls, a rug over the threadbare carpet that did not hide any secret passages, the heavy table, and various posters on the wall. She said, almost absentmindedly, "Liars go to Hell, and then they rise again as vampires."

Sasuke's voice drifted back from the bathroom, as low as ever, but unerringly clear despite the groaning tap. "It's the reason there are so many of them."

She couldn't help it: her mouth quivered with amusement. "You know, you'd think that that sort of resurrection would turn them into zombies."

"Zombies don't exist," Sasuke said.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me you never thought about it before. Everyone did, ever since that day Naruto impersonated the teacher and told us to dress up in blood and face paint."

There was a short pause, during which Sakura listened more keenly than she'd ever admit - under torture less powerful than that really, really old purple dinosaur show Sai watched to learn about friendship and love and you and me, anyway - for his response.

"Hn." Typically uninformative. But at least he sounded vaguely amused at the memory.

Sakura stopped in front of a large spread that showed two maps: one of the world and one of the country, both rendered in psychedelic colours that went to waste outside the closets of edgy rock stars and the screensavers of your average office employee. "You'd think there would have been more protest from them, when the country lines changed."

"They would never expose themselves," Sasuke said, taking the unexpected change of subject in stride. "Vampires love their secrets just as much as Leaf does. Especially if those secrets keep them safe from being hunted down for revenge."

Of course. Sasuke could, in fact, be verbose, could be loyal to a cause if it had something to do with revenge. Her fists clenched by her sides. She made a conscious effort to relax them.

"Real secrets have a way of spreading," Sakura said, "of being known. And then what?"

"Then people kill them," Sasuke said harshly.

Sakura ran a finger across the map of the world, which was vastly different from the way it had looked when Sakura was born, a couple of years after the turn of the millennium. Her eye traced the road she'd taken in the past week: from (neon blue) Fjord, where she'd met Sasuke, into the plains that separated (scarlet) Ember, a city located near the centre of the country, and (glittery) Nephrite. Cities that hadn't existed twenty years ago, before World War Three. Her hand paused at Leaf's location. She muttered, "Like you did."

There was a beat, and something clattering into the shower. Sasuke's muffled voice drifted out from the bathroom, but he stopped before Sakura could work out what he was cursing.

"The Elders were much worse than vampires," Sasuke said, much harder. "And I didn't owe you the truth when you couldn't accept it."

"You say that as if you actually thought about it and tried."

Sasuke didn't answer that, but he did say, "Real secrets aren't always spread. People only believe what they want to."

Sakura wondered how he could say that with a straight face. "True. Mainly because they avoid everyone who could beat the truth into them."

"I don't need you to tell me to go back to Leaf," Sasuke said quietly, suddenly, emerging from the bathroom.

"I wasn't trying to-" Sakura stopped, because she had been digging up old memories, and that was the stupid, pathetic crux of the matter, buried beneath every sharp word she could throw in his direction. In the end, she just shook her head, accepted a brush from him, and began painting. They sealed the doorway and windows of the main room first, inking in tiny, neat characters Sakura had mastered solely in the name of procrastinating from physical work, working wordlessly side by side. Sakura went to do the bathroom, found that Sasuke had already finished while they were speaking, and re-sealed a spot close to the end, where his writing had wavered, as though his hand had trembled in surprise.

"We're as safe now as we can be. I'm calling it a night."

He nodded, hands stuffed into pockets and not quite looking at her. Sakura watched him for a moment; her words slipped out quietly, without any particular bite. "But you know, Sasuke, I wasn't the only one trying to change someone's mind, tonight."

She turned her back and walked away, because it might be a cold day in Hell when Sasuke achieved the emotional competence of a twelve-year-old midget, but he would still get there if she left him to think about it. And even if, to his eyes, it made her an idiot who couldn't keep from lashing out, that was all right; the strongest person she had ever known was an idiot sometimes - strongest even if he needed saving now and again, but especially now.

- : -

Despite the growing piles of evidence, most people believed in vampires the exact same way they believed in true love or the wisdom of tax evasion: only barely and depending on life experience even then, but with a certain clinging tenacity that kept the beliefs alive. It was one of the reasons Leaf had not fully mobilised to destroy them.

But the moment Sakura woke, even before she knew what exactly had pulled her out of dreamless sleep, she could feel the tingling in the air, and her first thought was, Vampire.

A bone-white face grinned down at her.

She rolled out of bed, already channelling power into her hands as her heart tried its very best to break her ribs. Her mouth opened in a silence scream. If she had been a closer to the window, she would have smashed right through and broken the seals, but her desperate lunge was cut short when fingers closed around her wrist, jarring her, making her lash out in desperation at the black-haired interloper-

"Sakura."

The room swam back into focus, as soft candlelight filtered into her vision.

It was like air had rushed suddenly back into the room; it was still heavy and tingling, like chakra hummed somewhere close, but she could breathe again. Her lungs filled, and she gasped, light-headed, legs like jelly and knees on the verge of wobbling as she realised what she had almost done.

"Sorry," she muttered, pulling her wrist out of his grip. She shook her pink hair impatiently out of her eyes. Then she got a good look at Sasuke's face, and the hairs at the back of her neck rose in time with another spike of her heart rate.

Slowly, she swivelled around, ready to face the vampire outside the window and whatever threats he promised.

Sakura had known that empty threats couldn't have painted that grim expression on Sasuke's face, but it still didn't prepare her.

Because the vampire's handiwork wasn't outside.

Painted in bold, dripping, bloody letters, right above her head: "STAY."

The blood froze in her veins, and the roaring in her ears drowned out every other sound in the world. But the vampire wasn't making any sound; he simply grinned in her direction in a decidedly unfriendly manner, as though they were sharing a dirty secret that was completely her fault. And turned and faded into the darkness, moonlight shining on his blond ponytail and - her gut clenched - his crimson and black cloak.

Her dresser exploded in his wake.

- : -

The pieces of shattered clay and bits of wood were swept into a corner. The lights were no longer working, but that wasn't much of a surprise, or much of a problem given what Sakura and Naruto had once referred to as Sasuke's undiagnosed pyromania. They checked the seals individually, under candle-light, after Sakura had pulled the splinters out of her back and healed the more significant wounds until they scabbed over.

"If there's nothing wrong he shouldn't have got in," Sakura said quietly, once they stood side by side in the main room, as safe as sitting ducks and on the verge of jumping at moving shadows.

Sasuke scowled. The pinwheels in his eyes were whirling madly as his gaze flicked everywhere, like he was following mosquitoes buzzing through the air. "They're not broken."

"We didn't sense him," Sakura said, staring him down, "so obviously he's able to hide from our powers."

"Tch." But he admitted, "They're not much use then."

With three steps, Sasuke crossed the room, stopping in front of the door. His hand twisted sharply on the door handle - sharply enough that the handle screeched in protest, screws twisting somewhere in the glinting metalwork. He grunted with effort, the exertion of his muscles visible, tugging so hard that the handle began to shake. The door did not budge.

"Sasuke," Sakura said, going to stand beside him, her reflection following her in the window.

He stood aside, watching, and there was even something of a faint smile on his face as she cracked her knuckles.

Her fist slammed hard into the wooden door with a resounding CRACK, chakra exploding out with natural ability honed by years of work. At the last moment, her face turned away to avoid the splinters shooting from the point of impact. The walls shook, groaning, and the ceiling rumbled ominously with internal strains. But it held. Worse -

She gasped as her chakra drained out of her fist, tugging at her reserves with speed that left her dizzy. She snatched back her hand, staring. "Did you see that?" she demanded, refraining with effort from cradling her hand like she was five years old again.

Sasuke nodded, eyes narrowed. "I could try fire."

"Or the door could suck your chakra away," Sakura retorted. "Or maybe we're just going to burn to death. We can use chakra, but we're not exactly invincible."

They weren't, whatever Naruto or Sasuke thought - or maybe the problem was that they weren't thinking, when they threw themselves into situations that lowered life expectancy so much, neither should have lived to see their fifteenth birthdays. They'd been born with a measure of chakra, and Leaf had taken them and honed all three with exercises ranging from trying to burn Kakashi's books (Sasuke), to defacing Sasuke's home for blaming the theft on him (Naruto), to clawing for the privilege of getting beaten to within an inch of her life (Sakura), but chakra only started to compensate for a vampire's physical superiority. They were still human, as fragile as trust; chakra was a powerful tool that could be used to briefly enhance strength and speed, and to cast certain spells, or jutsu, but not a miracle.

"You know we can't get out without the breaking their seal," Sakura warned, "and I for one have no idea where it is. We'll burn. I won't be able to heal that much quickly enough."

"Ten minutes," Sasuke allowed generously, after a moment. "I make no promises after that. No one," he said in a low voice, "is going to protect Madara. Not even his minions."

Akatsuki. Clay bombs. A stone plunged into the pit of her stomach and sank there beyond hope of retrieval as the air tingled.

- : -

Time passed, laden with the heavy sense of preparing uselessly for the inevitable.

The moon crawled painfully across the sky, blotting out the faint stars with reflected luminescence. Ever so slowly, the stars rotated around the North Pole; drawing seal symbols around her with ink, Sakura could have counted them all, and still have enough time on her hands to fall into the pits of a panic attack and claw her way back out, before the cycle began again. (And again and again.)

The moment she finished, she rested her back against a corner, listening to the loud, but fading, roar of flames as Sasuke fought for a way out. Her tools were scattered around her: jars of Holy water (an astonishingly rare commodity due to the difficulty of getting a blessing) and richly scented oils, silver-edged knives sharpened until they hummed, a rough wooden cross with one arm sharpened to a point. At least she didn't have to worry about the bulkiest component of her repertoire exploding if it caught on fire; Sasuke carried that on his back.

While she waited, she fiddled absentmindedly with her silver bracelet. It was a simple design, three slightly different strands of silver braided together, with crimson bloodstones fused where the strands crossed; simultaneously beautiful and practical, given the properties of its components. She had kept it tucked safely into one of her side-pockets for most of her trip with Sasuke; the memories it brought to the surface, of the last few nights her tight-knit group had been whole, made it too painful to wear regularly, but she hadn't been able to bear the thought of never seeing it again.

"Come on, come on," she muttered, fingernails tapping impatiently.

"Well, isn't this interesting?" If her heart kept skipping beats like this, she wouldn't need to wait for a vampire to finish her off. "Waiting for me?" The vampire emerged from the shadows. Up close, its smirk was no pleasanter than it had been earlier, when he was watching her through a glass pane. Fabric rolled in waves, crimson clouds distorting on his black robes. A chill rolled down Sakura's spine; she hadn't even sensed his presence.

Blond and - there was no other word for it - silky hair swaying with every step, the vampire reached towards her. His face was disturbingly handsome, though from his swaying gait, Sakura wondered if the vampire wouldn't have preferred to be described instead as 'pretty'; his fine features were the sort that convinced people on the streets he was female, and some groups refused to consider otherwise, even if he and his friends firmly referred to him as a man.

"Annoying kid," the vampire muttered, stopping short just in front of her seals. His hands settled on his hips - Sakura blinked - and he regarded her sceptically. "I don't know how you killed Sasori."

Sakura forced out a laugh, releasing her death grip - finger by finger - on her silver and bloodstone bracelet. "The same way I'll kill you, of course."

His smirk widened, his single properly functioning eye glinting. He seemed in no hurry to simply finish her off. "Kill me? You can't even leave the house." His arms rose and fell in a languid shrug, hands opening to reveal the twin mouths tattooed on his palms. "And no," he added, bending down until their eyes were level, "you are not leaving."

"Whatever you use," Sakura warned, "I can smash through it."

"As effective as punching a spike, yeah," the vampire agreed. "I know your strengths."

"And I know yours, Deidara," Sakura said calmly. She held his eyes for a moment, then directed his gaze to the floor with her own.

He shook his head, clucking his tongue. "A ring of Holy water? Beautiful. Fleeting," he added, scuffing the line of water, "and beautiful because of that, but useless. Did the Uchiha tell you that it would help?" He snorted inelegantly. "I'm not surprised. Itachi was a bastard, too." Old memories danced in his eyes.

Sakura glared. Then she simply threw her head back and laughed with abandon. "I trust him."

It was surprisingly, disturbingly, easy to say. What would Leaf think if they knew what she was doing?

Something must have alerted Deidara to the fact that something was wrong. Without warning, he flew across the seals and stopped maybe an inch away from her, reaching for her throat. Whatever degree of control it was that had allowed him to actually leave a source of blood in her room, it was gone now. Deidara jerked her up by the shoulders, jaw cracking and fangs lengthening.

Even as she flinched back as far as she could, Sakura caught the flicker of orange at the edge of her vision.

"Tell your partner to stop whatever it is he's doing," Deidara hissed, all semblance of normality vanished. Icy air rasped across the skin of her throat, making her shudder with revulsion. "Or you die." He shook her, hard, and if it were physically possibly, blood would be draining out of his face; Sakura just smiled. "What did you do with your chakra? What did you help him do!"

Despite the crick in her neck, Sakura didn't reply. Her eyes met Sasuke's, over Deidara's shoulder. His hands formed a rapid series of gestures, ending with flames flowing through his hooked finger - flames which licked at the outside of the house, for that was where Sasuke stood, out in the frigid darkness.

"I'll kill her!" Deidara shouted wildly, dropping her. He was a blur, pounding at the door one second, digging frantically at the floorboards in the next, but Sasuke had set a crude but temporarily effective seal around the perimeter. "No, I won't, I'll let her burn slowly -"

He stopped as Sakura's bracelet smashed into the wall in front of him, clattering hard onto the wooden floor, beneath curls of smoke. "Your Akatsuki took him." Every word she spat out was shaped with newfound understanding - the emotion she'd felt when she caught sight of his robes. "You were going to play with me instead of killing us, get back at me for Sasori. But I am not letting you out, even if I die here with you." Too slowly, Deidara turned, eye wide. "I'll settle for revenge as long as you burn."

Deidara rushed for her, possessed, maybe, with the frenetic need to make her suffer and choke along with him. He was not fast enough.

Sakura had already plunged one of her knives right into her heart.

- : -

Spoilery warnings: character death

Well?