He finds her exactly 600 meters out from the current sound base.
She broken, and bloodied, obviously mission worn, and it stings his heart to see her this way, and wonders why the hell Naruto and Kakashi didn't protect her. He doesn't even have to think about picking her up, he just does; mechanically.
He only thinks about it momentarily when he hears voices fast approaching, but immediately shuts down the idea of leaving her to be found.
What if it's her enemy?
So he takes her with him, although the frantic edge in the people's voices tell him that they are not.
When he examines her on his way back to sound, he realizes she's changed. Her hair is shorter, less preened and cared for, and she seems to have grown smaller against him and lighter. When he thinks over her changes he comes to the sad conclusion that he day he left, everything didn't just freeze frame and wait for his return, no, they had kept up going; rolling; with or without him.
Though she has changed plenty, she still feels relatively the same. Her skin is still soft, and she still feels vunerable and innocent. It's as if the hard outer shell she's built around herself is only visible to his eye.
For when his eyes see her, they do not comprehend that it is the same girl.
But when his hands run over her body, they immediately register that this is 'his' Sakura.
It's funny how his senses work that way.
It's a long time later that her body actually begins to respond from the small coma he'd found her in.
Exactly four days, seven hours, and 32 seconds, not that'd he'd been counting.
She starts rolling around in fits of screaming in his bed, and despite all his half-ass-emotionless-avenger attempts to soothe her nightmares, they continue for several more days.
It's around three in the morning on the eighth day that she actually wakes up. He's sitting a few feet from her bedside in a worn wooden chair. He looks a sight, as if he hasn't slept in a while. When she sits up, nothing about her movement is groggy or sleep-scummed. She immediately feels his bloodshot eyes watching her and turns her head, and for the first time in 4 years, those damnable green eyes bore into his own.
He feels his insides relax and his heart jump starts back into beating. He releases the breath he hadn't known he was holding and mentally kicks himself letting her get injured.
He can tell; knows; that he is going to like having his old teammate around. But when he extends a hand to touch her face, just to check to see if she was really the person he remembers, and if she's actually there, she bats him away with extreme force and leaps out of bed with a glare plastered to her face.
"Bastard." She spits.
It doesn't take him long to remember that he is her enemy, and that this reaction is natural, no matter what the stabbing anger inside him is saying.
When she goes to make for the door, a red haze falls over him that is most definitely unfamiliar. He catches her from behind, making quick work of subdueing her hands and within moments, she is sprawled back on the bed with him pinning her there, sputtering hateful curses, and elaborate insults.
She continues to fight him long and hard, though he now refuses to lay a hand on her, now just letting her run herself dry of chakra and the dwindling supply doesn't take long to empty.
When he later reports to Orochimaru, Kabuto recommends restraining her and gives him the tools to do it.
By nightfall of her eighth day in his care, Sakura is bound hand and foot in chakra draining shackles.
He finds that she has changed to much since he has gone. She's become cold, and distant like him. But then he tells himself that she couldn't have changed to become that, for right before he had dropped down on her squad from above, she had been laughing and joking with the rest of them, acting like the typical Sakura he remembers. But she no longer seems to treat him as she once did
She no longer addresses him as Sasuke-kun; bastard and Uchiha now seem to suit her just fine.
She now questions his actions, insults him, attempts to physically harm him, and goes as far to spit on him when he's trying to feed her.
He knows she knows that she is now fully dependent on his care, as she is now too drained of energy to move much. He feeds her, bathes her, clothes her, brings her to the bathroom, and is the sole provider for her care. He doesn't know why she doesn't give in to him, allow him to do those things without a fight.
They rarely talk, mostly just glare at each other from across the room. She still refuses to speak to him regularly, preferring insults and their kin now.
He refuses to answer her questions and insults. He doesn't want to acknowledge her personality change.
She's been with him for nearly half a year when he realizes that she makes him angry.
Not necessarily at her, but more at himself.
Would she have become this way if hadn't left?
Did he ruin her? Take away the only innocent ninja he'd ever known?
A flurry of memories run through his mind playing moments; flashes; of her speaking cheerily.
"Yes! I get to be with Sasuke-kun!"
"Sasuke-kun!"
"Come on, Sasuke-kun!"
"Are you okay, Sasuke-kun?"
"Stop it! Please stop it!"
"Sasuke-kun?"
"Sasuke-kun…"
"Thank-you for saving me from the sand, Sasuke-kun."
"Sasuke… Kun?"
"Sasuke!" He doesn't jump when his daydream is shattered, and his eyes slide over to meet her's.
"Hn?"
"Why?" She asks, struggling to sit herself up on the pillows, her weakened muscles quiver from misuse and he mechanically reaches out and pulls her up by the shoulders, so that she is positioned comfortably. She glowers as he does this, obviously damning her weakened state.
"What?" He asks, hiding surprise and a hint of glee, for it is the first time in weeks that she has talked to him as if he wasn't a traitor.
"Why am I here?" She mumbles, obviously exhausted from trying to move. He freezes up, and his mind goes into a spell of thought, trying to think of a possible answer. Finally he settles on, "I don't know."
And he truthfully doesn't; doesn't know why he brought her here, why he worries about her when he's out of the room, and why he can't bring himself to send her back to where she'll be happy. Although he expects he's being selfish; as he's happier with her being miserable and safe here, then being happy and at risk and away from him, back in Konoha.
She seems satisfied with the answer, as though she suspects Orochimaru is the one behind her imprisonment.
It's later in the middle of the night that he gets a taste of what his younger self is aching for. He awakes to a sound, little louder than a pin dropping. At first he thinks his room is being infiltrated by one of Orochimaru's spies, but then realizes, it's Sakura.
Her dreaming is much like the first few days she'd stayed with him, though now her arms flail feebly, and she makes pathetic whimpers of fear. He approaches her cot that he had set up for her on the other side of the room, he drags the worn wooden chair that he had spent the majority of his last six months in with him making an unbearable screeching sound that doesn't wake her.
He leans over her small form, stroking her face in vain attempts to soothe her, it's then when he makes out some of her cries.
"Sasuke-kun!" She wails weakly, and he stiffens, "Sasuke-kun, please!"
He knows what she's dreaming about, and the stroking of her forehead continues.
She continues her wails, her voice growing shriller from exhaustion.
"Sas-"
"Sakura." He whispers softly to her, cutting off her whimper.
She is quiet for a few moments, before her dream suddenly seems to take a turn for the worst and tears begin to roll down her unconscious face.
He drags her upward, out of bed and into an awkward embrace, and she silences.
It is the morning after this dream that she refuses to eat entirely.
"Eat it, Sakura." Expertly aiming the spoonful of soup for her mouth, which she refuses to open. She makes a noise similar to 'nmmph!' and he let's out a groan.
Did she want to die? It had been two days since she had last eaten.
It's the next day that he has Kabuto deliver the iv.
It's exactly two days after this, that she stops talking to him, and all her attempts at movement stopped as well. She lay perfectly still, eyes glued to the ceiling, like a china doll.
This scared him. She no longer responded to anything that he did, and was only sustained by the iv drip clinging to her arm.
She was losing herself, he knew that much. He also knew that his selfishness had to come to an end, or else the old Sakura, and new Sakura, would both cease to exist.
She had been with him for exactly 11 months when he let her go.
It stung his heart as he undid the chakra drainers from around her wrists and ankles, as he knew he was going to release her. Surprise flickered over her dead eyes, sputtering her emotions back to life, and she is even more surprised when he lifts her out of bed and into one of Kabuto's cold metal wheelchairs.
"Where are we going?" She chokes out of her unused throat, and a stiff silence washes over as he doesn't answer.
Her mind comes to the conclusion that Orochimaru has finally decided to dispose of her.
While in his mind, a war of selfishness and his own worry for her battle it out.
They go down hundreds of dark hallways, until finally he kicks open a last door, and they are outside, in the middle of a desert. He deserts the wheelchair and scoops her up and takes across the landscape with inhuman speed.
It takes exactly six hours to arrive at his destination. He sets the weakened, now strengthening girl on her feet, and orders "Walk."
She does, and with him close behind she goes around the bend of the road and almost doesn't recognize Konoha's gate. She falls down in surprise, and in an instant, he is on her, lifting her back up and supporting her.
She wraps her arms around him, much to his surprise, "Sasuke-kun!" She wails, clinging to him fiercely.
He pats her back awkwardly, trying to kill that glowing feeling that had welled up inside him at the suffix.
For he knows that he can't have her around anymore, she is a distraction, just a hindrance.
But he allows himself to kiss her, for he also knows that this could be the last time he ever sees her again.
It's been almost a month since she's been admitted into the hospital the Tsunade decides she is recovered enough to share her experience with her and the board.
She tells about his lack of cruelty and his annoying interest in keeping her alive, the chakra drainers, and the IV.
But she fails to mention the kiss when he returns her.
That, she tells herself, is not important, all while fighting back a smile.