Hey, everyone. So ... I've been working on this since September, if I do recall, and I've finally gotten the first couple of chapters how I want them and so it's (finally!) time to post. I wasn't actually planning to post this until next week, but I've got absolutely nothing to do right now (aside from study for my midterms... -ahem-) so I figured now was as good a time as any.
The story's called 'Smoke & Mirrors' if you hadn't gathered that already and ... well, it's sort of my baby. I had this idea pop in my head and just keep gnawing at me until I started to write it. So far I've got twelve chapters done but most of them still need editing, and I couldn't really tell you how long it's going to be right now if I tried. I also couldn't fit the full summary in the box on the submit page, so here that is:
Summary: When all hope is lost and revenge burns in one's veins, everything becomes a means to an end. For Haruno Sakura, it was no different. Forced to flee her village, she finds herself embarking on a journey where the distinction between reality and illusion, and friend or foe is marked by a very fine line.
Also, I know this is labeled as a Romance story but the pairing right now is only Sakura, but that will change. Right now, I think I'd like to keep you all guessing. And just for the record, my author's notes will hopefully not be this long again.
That said, if you find any typos or anything, let me know. I try to go over it with a fine-toothed comb, but I don't always catch everything.
Oh yeah, and enjoy.
And review, too, please. :D
Racing through the treetops, the only sounds distinguishable to Haruno Sakura's ears were that of her own pounding heart and gasping breaths. She had been running for hours and she knew that they were still pursuing her, though she had yet to see them even once in the hours—it felt more like days—they had been chasing her through the words of her birth country.
Had someone approached her that morning and told her that by day's end she would be running from her own compatriots, she'd have laughed in their face and told them to shove a kunai where the sun doesn't shine. However, the fact that she couldn't slow her pace for fear of being captured by nin of her own village—or worse, killed—was a reminder of the grim reality of her current situation.
It had started during a simple information-gathering mission with Team Kakashi—sans their team leader and with two new additions, Yamato-taichou and a strange young man named Sai. The mission had gone off without a hitch up to the point when Orochimaru had shown up to kill 'Sasori,' who was not the now-dead Akatsuki, but instead her temporary team leader. Their cover quickly became null and the next thing Sakura Knew, Sai had betrayed them and gone off with the snake sannin.
Yamato-taichou had witnessed the exchange between the pasty nin and the sannin using a mokuton clone and their team had quickly given chase despite their injuries, only to be thrown off the trail. All of the precautions their transitory team leader had put in place were for naught when dealing with Orochimaru and his medic sidekick, which quickly made the Konoha team's first priority to get back to the village to inform the Godaime that Shimura Danzo was working with Orochimaru to meet some end, presumably a coup d'état.
Around that time was when the trouble had really started. Her team had made haste in returning to Konoha, Yamato-taichou having taken the time to explain the circumstances surrounding Danzo and ROOT along the way, also letting them know that Sai was a part of the secret ANBU organization that worked for the war-mongering opponent of the Sandaime and his ideas. The crippled man had been trying to place himself in the Hokage seat for years, which meant that the Godaime would be his prime target.
Upon reaching Konoha—the three of them already weary and injured—they were met with the horrifying realization that the coup was indeed real, and very much underway. She had watched in horror as her childhood home was burnt to the ground before her very eyes, and by its own nin at that.
It had taken Yamato-taichou feverishly shaking and yelling for her attention to finally shift from the blazing inferno that was her home to the man standing beside her. He had told the two of them under no uncertain terms—both she and her kyuubi container teammate—to head to Suna for back-up. Naruto, ever the hero, had opened his mouth to give protest but was quickly shut up with the reminder that their ability to reach their ally quickly would mean losing the village for good or coming out on top.
Sakura had wasted no time and began pulling the blond west in the direction of Sunagakure. Not long after their departure however, ROOT caught their trail and the masked nin had quickly taken measures to separate them. The emotionless shinobi hadn't bothered to outright attack her the entire time they had pursued her—they hadn't even thrown weapons. If she had to guess, she figured that they were waiting for her to tire herself out before they tried to capture her.
Coming back to the present with that thought in mind, she reached into her hip pouch and pulled a soldier pill from its folds, slipping it past her lips and biting down on the tiny sphere. Immediately following the crunch and the taste of bitterness she felt a rush of energy overtake her system, her chakra increasing as well, allowing her to continue her journey westward to the safety of Konoha's desert ally.
It wasn't until she was halfway through River country that a distant thought struck her: if she continued moving was and into Wind country she was sure to be taken by ROOT-and if not by them then by the unforgiving climate of the desert. She had no water left on her person, nor the luxury of time to stop to obtain any—and by the time she reached the arid region she was sure to be dehydrated already without the addition of the taxing heat of the sun.
In that moment she knew with almost absolute certainty that if she continued west she would never make it to Suna and she quickly made her decision, swiftly changing course due north towards Rain country. It was a huge gamble considering that no one knew the state of Rain—last anyone had heard it was in the middle of a civil war—but she would take uncertainty over certain death any day. She knew that Naruto would without a doubt be able to reach Suna—ROOT and the desert be damned. She would catch up to him once the pressure of ROOT had subsided and she'd had a chance to regain her strength.
She felt her pursuers speed up in their chase and struggled to match their pace. She couldn't afford to be caught now—at her current speed, she estimated she would soon reach the border separating River and Rain countries and with it, those giving chase would cease their pursuit. They would continue to follow her through the civilian country of River and Konoha's current ally of Wind, but they wouldn't dare to entire the uncertainty that lay in the Rain country without first consulting their superior. If she was being at all honest, she wouldn't have dared to try the feat herself were she not so desperate for a reprieve.
But she was desperate and she needed to rest before she collapsed, so her options were considerably more limited at this point. Death by enemy nin sounded a fair but more noble than death by her own comrades—because no matter how twisted their outlook on the village and who they thought should be in charge, they were supposed to be fighting on the same side.
As she began to close in on the border separating the two countries, she felt her pursuers up their speed and impossibly managed to match her pace to theirs, pushing her body harder and going at speeds faster than she'd ever traveled before. Her muscles screamed out in protest, but she was so close, she couldn't stop when freedom was so close at hand.
The closer she drew to the border, the easier it became to tell how close she was because the ROOT members behind her amped up their speed and even began throwing the weapons that had been so conspicuously absent. It seemed that now that they were about to lose her in unknown territory, they were finally seeing fit to actually try to stop her.
She dodged their weapons and continued on, deflecting as necessary until she finally crossed the border, able to tell the imaginary line by the telltale spattering of rain that increased the further north she pressed. She continued to be followed over the boundary for nearly a kilometer into the war-torn country of Rain but quickly retreated after a few more minutes of pursuit.
Even absent the imminent threat of death she still didn't stop, knowing that if she slowed down before she reached a safe place that she may very well collapse from exhaustion. She would much prefer to be in as safe a place as possible before trying to rest, as opposed to being exposed to the elements and other threats to her life.
It was only as the sunlight began to disappear behind the treetops that her speed reduced to take the opportunity to scan the landscape for a cave or some other type of shelter to set camp in. It wasn't long before she came across just such a formation and quickly set about laying traps and setting a perimeter of chakra sensors that would alert her should someone get to close. Her eyes were only half open as she made her way back and her bedroll was barely flat on the ground before they closed fully.
Her last thought before slipping into a fitful unconsciousness was a silent prayer that Naruto would make it to Suna safely, succeeding where she had failed her village.
When she regained consciousness—because she could hardly call what she'd done sleeping so much as passing out—the first thing her senses told her was that the rain continued to fall, not that she was surprised. The second thought that breached her sleep-addled mind was that none of her sensors had been tripped, which meant that she had not been discovered while she slumbered—a detail she was incredibly grateful for considering her life may very well have been forfeit if she had.
Her eyes opened blearily and she realized idly that it was still dark—dark again, she mentally corrected herself: she'd managed to sleep through an entire day. She thanked the kami that for whatever reason, Ame nin hadn't bothered to run border patrol near her location, otherwise she would more likely than not have woken to a very different scene than she actually had.
She laid immobile for an immeasurable amount of time, mind poring over the events of the last seventy-two hours as she slowly woke; it was hard to believe all that had happened. Now more than ever, she wished she hadn't been so adamant to follow the leader that Akasuna no Sasori had given to her. Shizune had been right to express worry at them following the lead given by the dying Akatsuki—for reasons entirely different than she had voiced, but still: if she and Tsunade had taken heed, Danzo never would have had the chance to so effortlessly stage and execute a coup.
'How did he manage to do it so quickly?' She wondered for the nth time. It was mind-blowing that Orochimaru had moved an entire army past her team without them so much as noticing a thing, it just didn't seem possible. Her brain ached at the onslaught of possibility about how the snake sannin had managed the task. She reminded herself that the man did have innumerable kinjutsu at his disposal, so it wouldn't be worth it to ponder the finer details of just what had happened.
Finally, she found the strength and pulled herself into a sitting position. Her eyes took in the lines of her natural shelter and the sound of the rain hitting the vegetation outside invaded her senses once more. She would eventually need to find a more permanent place to seek shelter until she set off for Suna, but the most pressing matter at the moment was that she needed to eat.
There was not point to gathering wood for a fire, as it was far too wet for any of it to be dry and she didn't have the luxury of time to waste waiting around for it to do so. She supposed a well-executed katon jutsu would take care of the problem of the wet timber, but she knew no techniques of the element so it seemed as though she was out of luck for a warm meal.
She supposed she wasn't expected to be perfect, but now more than ever she was thankful that she'd managed to merge her Inner personality with her own—just the thought of the endless ridicule she would have suffered otherwise was almost too much to bear. After all, being around two katon types for as long as she had been, it wouldn't have been impossible for her to have memorized the hand seals and practiced on her own.
Resigned to her fate, she reached into her travel pack and withdrew a nutritional bar. Any other food she'd packed required a fire and the prospect of such a thing at present was nil.
As she absently munched on the bland food bar, she contemplated her next move: she needed to find a small village or town to stay in. She supposed she could travel under the guise of a wandering doctor, but she couldn't let it become known that she was a kunoichi of Konoha—it would surely mean the end of her if she did.
That meant that she would have to change her appearance—it wasn't the prospect of doing so that bothered her, it was more the fact that in order to keep her shinobi background hidden, a henge was out of the question. Her hair would have to be dyed, which just the thought of such a thing rubbed her the wrong way. She wasn't near as vain as she had been in her genin days, but the idea of covering her pastel locks with a color that wasn't her natural just sat the wrong way with her. It took forever to come out and she never quite felt like herself—though in her current situation, she mused, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
It also meant that chakra healing was out of the question, which was just as well considering that civilians would be frightened by the blatant demonstration of her shinobi background. On top of that, she would be able to amass her strength for the impending trip to Suna and she knew that every last bit of it would be necessary to make it there in one piece. Traveling from Konoha to Suna was one thing, but she had never made the trip from so far north, so she would need to tread that much more carefully in order to avoid becoming food for the scavengers that filled the desert.
Once she had finished her 'breakfast,' she rummaged through her pack and pulled out a storage scroll. It had been a gift from Tsunade after her graduation from training to be a medic to working in the hospital and the field as one; it was a tiny little thing, but size was not a proper indicator of how much it held. She had everything from empty scrolls to disguises and medical supplies stored in it with plenty of room to spare, and now more than ever she was thankful for the gift from her shishou—what it held may very well prove to save her life.
She quickly replaced all but the scroll back into her pack before setting off in search of a lake or stream to bathe in and color her hair. Kami knew how badly she needed to wash up after all the running she had done in the past half week. Hopefully, but not likely, the water would help to wash away some of her worries as well.
A huge sigh of relief left Sakura as the entrance to a small village came into sight from just around a bend in the road. She had been traveling since the sun first poke over the overcast horizon and the rain had finally stopped earlier in her trip. Having travelled at a civilian's pace meant she was on the road for nearly all house of light in the day: the sun was now beginning its descent into sunset and regardless of how deeply she had slept, she felt nowhere near well-rested. Her chakra was still pitifully low and her body ached so deeply that it felt like it reached her bones.
Once inside the gates, she peered around curiously with dull brown eyes—contacts, as her eyes were nearly as distinctive as her pink hair in their own right—looking everywhere for an inn in which to sleep.
A ways down the road she found exactly what she'd been looking for, a wooden sign hanging above the door with the unimaginative moniker 'Inn' painted haphazardly across the planks. She wasted no time in approaching the building and stepped inside the shabby lobby before walking to the withered old man seated behind the equally-disintegrating counter.
A brief exchange was had with the suspicious villager before she managed to talk him into allowing her a room. She wasted no time heading to her destination, but not before requesting that she not be disturbed for any reason other than absolute emergency.
Once she was caught up on her rest and had regained her chakra, she would spread her cover of being a wandering doctor,-but for now, she was much too exhausted to begin deciding specific details of the explanation she would give to village's people; she could only hope that they were used to seeing travellers from time to time.
A solid twelve hours of sleep later left her feeling much more well-rested and ready to take on the chore of establishing herself—however temporarily—in the small community. She showered and dressed quickly, not stopped for an instant to look at the stranger in the mirror—before heading off to the village square where the daily market was located.
She made small talk with the villagers, or at least those amiable enough to start a monologue with someone they'd never met before. The people she spoke with were pleasantly surprised once they found that she was trained in the healing arts and one of them had even gone so far as to offer her lodging in an empty cottage past the edge of the village limits. She would still have to pay rent, but the price was a pittance compared to what she would have paid back in Konoha—she supposed that it was having a skill that worked so well to her advantage.
By sundown her things were moved from the inn and into the cottage and she'd even found the time to see a few patients before the residents all retreated behind the safety of closed doors for the night.
She leaned into the threadbare sofa in her temporary living room, feeling more comfortable than she had in days. The troubling circumstances surrounding her home were never far from her thoughts, but she took some small measure of comfort in knowing that Naruto wouldn't stop until he was safely behind Suna's walls-if there was one work that had never made it into Naruto's vocabulary, it was failure.
That wasn't to say that she wasn't worried any less. Anything could have happened to the sunny blond on his way to inform Gaara of the happenings in Konoha: the ROOT nin could have injured him severely; another still had him becoming dehydrated and passing out in the desert; even more unlikely than those situations, what if he had run into Akatsuki during his travels? She highly doubted the S-class criminals would be stupid enough to think of setting foot near Suna after what had just happened with the Kazekage, but there was so much space between where they had parted ways and the boundary of Sunagakure. She knew that nothing would stop Naruto, but that didn't stop her from fretting over the 'what if's.
She came to the decision then and there that she would stick around in this village for a week or two to let ROOT draw away from Rain before heading on to Suna to catch up with her teammate. Hopefully, she would arrive on time to help plan the counterattack against Danzo and Orochimaru to defend Konoha and take it back.
For now, however, she would lay low and regain her strength, for when she did leave for Suna, she would surely need it all for the trip and the events that would follow.
A week passed quickly and without incident. Sakura spent her days treating villagers and those from surrounding villages, and her nights were spent worrying over what was going on in the world outside the borders of Rain. She had heard whispers of increased shinobi activity in the woods surrounding the village—ROOT, she feared—but it seemed that news of the outside world was just as scarce here as news of Rain was to the lands outside of its borders, as she had heard nothing of the coup and its outcome or of her rambunctious teammate.
From what she had seen and garnered from the villagers, Rain's civil war was over—the former regime said to have been crushed by a force whose leader was said to have single-handedly obliterated whole shinobi villages in mere hours. Sakura wasn't sure how much stock to put into the tale, but the people of the country seemed much happier than she would have expected. She knew that they were suspicious of her—and rightfully so—but that didn't stop them from seeking her out to treat their ails.
She never used chakra in her healing, resorting to only homeopathic remedies and basic triage—she couldn't afford for word of her ability to use chakra to spread. As it was, it was bad enough that word had traveled of her skills and she'd seen people travel for up to a half a day to seek treatment from her. The line she was treading was a very fine one, and she knew that her solace was to be short-lived.
It seemed that her paranoia was well-founded, for on the morning of her tenth day in the small village and the day before she planned to set off for Suna, trouble found her. She had just finished tending to her last patient before lunch when she felt three chakra signatures coming very close to her temporary home.
At first she tried to rationalize her fears away, concluding that it was only a squad patrolling the area, but she knew that it wasn't the truth. In the days she had been in the village, she'd not felt a single developed chakra signature come within five kilometers of her location.
Her fears were reaffirmed when she felt them close in on her residents—each from a different angle around the small structure—intent on cornering her in the cottage. She watched anxiously as her patient walked off on the path away from her house—never noticing the shinobis' presence—and into the wilderness before she set off to gather her things. Thankfully, she'd already begun packing her things for the impending trip to Suna, so it took only a moment.
Her boots were only just on her feet when she heard the monotonous tone that could only be associated with the emotionally detached members of ROOT.
"Haruno Sakura, nukenin of Konohagakure, come quietly and we will not see fit to harm you."
The label of nukenin should not have come as such a surprise, nor should it have wounded her as much as it did—what with Shimura Danzo having presumably taken the helm as Hokage and her having run as she had—but it was a tough pill to swallow and she couldn't deny that it hurt.
She felt the trio closing in on the cottage and she scrambled to find a route of escape. As she felt them closing in on the walls of the structure an idea came to her and she felt guilty for what she was about to do to the space she had been occupying—but she was lost as to any other way out of her current predicament.
Concentrating chakra to her right fist, she slammed it into the floor of the cottage, the energy bursting out in all directions. She watched as the walls of the cottage crumbled like they were made from cheese and split the rough in half, a large chasm forming overhead. As soon as the opening above her was large enough, Sakura charged chakra to her legs and leapt through the hole, taking to the trees immediately and leaving the ROOT members behind—momentarily disoriented by the ground having crumbled from under their feet. She knew that the diversion would only allow her a thirty-second head start at the very most and right now, every second counted.
Once again, she fled for her life, running from her own compatriots. Pushing back tears of frustration she headed further north, wondering idly if all the running was really worth the throbbing ache it caused in her chest.
