That Drives the Wind
By: WhisperedSilvers
Prompt: "You don't look half-bad for a dead man."
Summary: It was as if fate played a cruel joke on her. —Sasori/Sakura
Sakura looks at him blankly, green eyes are darker than grass and softer the jade. Her poker face is slightly discomforting, but she doesn't care. She looks at him with such a deadpanned expression that he has to resist the urge to shift and look away, but it would be so out-of-character for him to look and feel uncomfortable. But her eyes are so green.
Her poker face shatters, the incredulity glitters in sage orbs and her eyebrows screw together, she chokes brokenly, "Y-You, w-what—How are you still alive?!"
He raises an eyebrow, "Do you really want an explanation, now of all times?"
"Yes!"
Sasori sighs at her unreasonable answer, he can feel the unfamiliar chakra outside the cave, "Unfortunately, we do not have time for frivolous questions."
"Frivolous? I destroyed your heart!" She very nearly screeches, she pauses for a minute before the disbelief takes another cloud of green, "What do you mean we?"
"It seems like your shinobi skills has diminished as you age, can you not tell there are cloud shinobi outside this area waiting to kill us?" He speaks so calmly that she had to resist throttling him.
Sakura claws at her face, "Cloud are allies with Leaf—"
"Rogue Cloud."
She blinks, "Oh."
She feels slightly dumb for not thinking of this before, if she remembers clearly, she can still hear Tsunade telling her that there has been a number of rogue shinobi hailing from Cloud, the reason is still unknown—there sightings are blatant on the borders of Rock and Grass. But she has a reason for not coming up to this obvious conclusion, the man that she killed five years ago—is alive!
"And you assumed that there is a we?"
Sasori isn't exactly patient, so he speaks quickly and tersely, "You have less than half your chakra left, I have three-quarters of mine, and we don't exactly have much time right now. So the best thing is for me to use you," He clarifies after a breath, "As a puppet."
Sakura didn't know if she had hit her head on the way down in this cavern or if he had lost his sanity when she destroyed him, she speaks dryly, "I'm sorry—but you have to understand, when is it—I don't know," She breathes harshly," Okay for me to—to team up with you?"
"You don't have a choice! You will die if you fight by yourself!"
"You don't know that!"
"Foolish girl, this isn't the time for morals!" Sasori hisses, his breath escapes from tightly clenched teeth.
"What," She laughs bitterly, "You want me to give you my body, and when it's over you'll stab in the back."
"Sakura," He uses her name and she stiffens, he knows her name—he never acknowledged her by her name, "You will die either way, you don't have to like it, but you have to trust me."
Trust.
He speaks of at as if he knows the actual meaning of the word. The caves are groaning and pebbles, more like rocks are falling from the ceiling. It's dark and damp and her heart is beating way too fast and she's trying to think, because she really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. She doesn't have a choice she realizes. She has more of a chance with him, than by herself. It's logic and probabilities that are against her.
Sakura speaks coldly, "Let's go."
She doesn't give her acceptance nor her rejection, and so, he follows. They were climbing out of the cavern as it falls apart; the rocks are too jagged and too unstable for them to run across. When she sees the sunlight, they jump, on the branches they are as they look at the rogue from an aerial view.
"It's a damn army!" She blinks partially in shock.
It's a hundred man army, and by the looks of it, they were all at least Jounin level—which didn't make it any easier. She tilts her head to look at him, his hair is red—hell-red, it's not bright, scarlet, a cover—a hood, covers his head, hiding bright red, scarlet hair and he's wearing glasses—she nearly flinches. He's wearing glasses that hides ochre orbs and he looks older, much, much older, at least five years older than her because she can see the beginnings of something like wrinkles form at the corner of his eyes—which really didn't make any sense.
"Ready?" Sasori doesn't need to look at her to know that she's staring at him; it doesn't make him feel odd, just natural.
"Sure." It isn't forced and it isn't bitter.
His fingers move fast, chakra treads erupt from his fingertips; it hooks on her shoulders, her elbows, her knees, her thighs, her backs, her wrists and ankles. She feels out of control, she feels like she can't stop and she can't do anything but destroy.
She jumps down, her fist slamming into the earth, creating fissures among fissures, rocks and pebbles splintering into trees. Sakura uses the uneven terrain to her advantage. He pulls her forward and twists her back, her hands are blocking every blow and she shoves her elbow into one of the nin's gut, she can hear the bones cracking, and blood splattering.
She can't hear anything.
She wonders if that is because of Sasori's jutsu, or if it is an effect from being a puppet—it's not like this with Chiyo, so maybe it's just him.
One of the shinobi with dirty blonde hair and eyes darker than yellow uses a water jutsu that looks like her sensei's water dragon, she dodges and preforms some type of jutsu that she never really learned—but she knows how much chakra to put into each input. It's like an equation she muses, placing the correct amount of chakra into a hand sign, and then equaling it to the output.
Fire spurts from her hands like flower petals, she knows better than to think that its petals, because it's not, it's like Asuma's chakra blades—she lies it's not like it at all. She doesn't have a medium. But they are blades. The fire blades cut threw the water dragon like butter, it doesn't spurt and sputter like drying water—no, it dissolves into air as soon as it touches it.
She doesn't stop.
The blade cuts threw his shoulder burning him, charred flesh wafting through the air, she cuts threw him, sliding over the bone of his sternum, before shoving a chakra-kick from the back. He slams into a tree.
Sasori pulls her up, she's in the air, and flips over a man's head snapping it between her thighs before barely missing a blade from a dangerously poison-dipped kunai, it's a hairsbreadth away from her cheek, but he yanks her back with strings, she slides under the man with a broken neck, in between his drooping legs, to punch the ground again. She jumps back dodging a punch that she didn't even see, Sasori's eyes are her's and she doesn't mind being blind.
This time her fist goes threw his ribcage, again, he pulls back and she splits. Rolling over, dodging a katana, and she's reminded of her and Sasori's match. She has to fight a grin, because forty of the hundred men she's fighting are down and she doesn't have a scratch.
Clearly, Sasori's been practicing.
Another ten.
Half are gone.
There is this one man, he fights with his katana, this isn't the same man who tried to stab her, no, he has green hair and black eyes—sooty even. He uses his katana in a familiar pattern she's seen before; he uses his katana like—like Sasuke! He twists the metal and holds it back like it's his own damn arm. But he uses wind chakra when attacks, like Naruto, but not like Naruto. He comes at her from above, swinging the damn thing like lightening. She moves back, jumps to the right and shoves her fist toward his upper jaw, but he dodges, sliding his katana over the metal plate just on the back of her knuckles—it sizzles, sparking shocks and he grins a bit feral for her.
He's the only person she sees that she has to be careful with, because clearly, none of his other comrades have any fancy jutsus up their sleeves. Another slams above her head, she ducks, the sound of metal sliding against metal makes her mind curl, she grabs the back of his calves and flings him towards the grass-head.
He tumbles back and she uses his lack of perception to her advantage. She slams her heel into the ground, shattering his ribs and chest cavity.
Only three-quarter of the little army left.
She lifts her pointer finger, curls it, and motions a come hither movement. Sakura has to wonder if she did that or did Sasori do that. It's exciting and adrenaline pumping, they come at her and she knows they don't have a chance. Sasori is meticulous and she knows from first-hand, he doesn't enjoy playing with his prey—he prefers to end it quickly.
There is only one left—it's like he doesn't sense fear, because his eyes are wide and hot. He's twitching, moving and he's movements aren't blurry at all—it's like he's coming at her in slow motion, and she can barely see where he hits and how fast he does hit her.
Green eyes latch onto something that's flickering yellow in the tiny clasp of his palm, she catches the words cuttingly, tightly that her eyes sting just a bit, she curses bluntly, "Fucking—Sasori, it's a flash bomb—"
The Cloud rogue pulls the trigger and she can see her life flash before her eyes in bright pixels—Sasori yanks her back, a bit too frustrated and a bit too anxious—which also didn't make sense as per usual, because he's Sasori—he doesn't get nervous.
The force of the chakra strings pulls her back into his chest, his warm, beating chest and the bomb explodes brighter than lightening, and she stops all breathing to lower the chance of poison inhalation.
It takes a few moments, but all is well. She inhales deeply, the strain of her shoulders leaves her aching and her arms are warm and rubbery.
"A suicide attack," Sasori exhales shakily, warm breath brushing her ear and it's so odd—
It comes to her in her next breath, "You're alive—you're human."
His heart.
She can feel his heartbeat and blood—
"Yes," He replies, he pulls back and she slides around to look at him.
Sakura doesn't know what to say, because he uses her to help himself, and helps her in the process, which, again, didn't make any sense, because they are enemies, they aren't—supposed—to be doing—this! And she wants to scream, she doesn't understand and he's perfectly screwing with her head, or at least that is what she thinks.
"That's why you didn't fight—you," She swallows, "You can't risk your body in the fight, you're vulnerable."
"Brat," He hisses and she realizes how close they are—
"Why didn't use your own puppets, you had enough room to hide and play," She demands, her eyes are blazing.
He actually rolls his eyes, before speaking with exasperation, "Apparently someone destroyed all of my puppets—years ago,"
"Oh." She did that.
Sakura needs to get the hell out of here, because her back isn't in the mood for another stab, so she tries to cool her tone and inch away, slowly, because this is way too weird for her to—to do something.
"Well, this is nice and everything," Sakura laughs sheepishly, "Catching up and fighting, but I've got things to do—and bye!"
This is bad. She's supposed to meet up with Kakashi and Naruto hours ago and she gets stuck fighting with the dead-guy she eliminated years ago—what the hell. She doesn't have time to kill him again, because she's low on chakra and he—ugh. She scowls internally; this is way too weird.
And just as she's about to uses substitution and run towards her team when he grabs her by the wrists and yanks her towards him.
Sasori's eyes are more like gold than burgundy when she looks at them, and it bothers her because she can't look away, he states harshly, "You will not tell them you've seen me, Sakura."
There he uses her name again and it makes her want to scream.
So she bites back with a bit more rage, "And what makes you think I'll do that?"
He grins a bit too feral for her to think, "Because I will be seeing you very soon, and if Konoha shinobi on my trail—well you just won't get my help, now will you?"
Sakura looks at him blankly, "What."
Because really, what the hell.
"Later, brat."
He disappears in a flurry of nothing.
And Sakura is just left what the same question she had in the beginning.
"What the hell is going on?"
There will be a follow-up to this, sequel-verse. This is my first Sasori/Sakura piece, so if he's out of character, if just a bit, I apologize. Heh.
Please Review!
