Looking at the sky, one would think that it was night time. Dark clouds spanned the whole sky. It was difficult to see through the dense sheets of rain pouring from the heavens. It was a storm considered harsh even for Amegakure. Just beyond the outskirts of the village, a kunnoichi struggled through the weather.
Haruno Sakura, numb from the cold, slowly trudged her way through the mud that was building up along the bank of the river. She was completely at a loss at what she was supposed to do. A war raged in her mind. Her sanity screaming at her to run the hell away and exploit this rare chance of escape she had been blessed with. Her limbs were disobeying that voice in her head though. Green eyes looked down at the burden she was hauling out of the river, questions building up behind their glossy surface. Tears of frustration were building up as she slipped once again in the filthy mud. She should just let go of him and then she could finally make it up the slippery river bank and disappear. She could finally go home.
The girl let out a desperate half growl- half whine of despair. She cursed and closed her eyes. Focusing on her empty chakra reserves, she scraped the bottom for even a tiny bit of chakra. She molded what tiny bit she could gather into her feet, using it to dig her way up and out of the hole they had begun to sink into and up the rest of the mud hill. At the top, she slung the two of them up over the ledge with the last of her strength and a cry.
"Cha!" she screamed, barely able to hear her own voice over the loud thundering of the rushing water and the pouring rain. At last, on solid (albeit wet) ground, Sakura laid on her back panting for breath. With tired eyes, she turned her head to the side. The soaked body beside her was sprawled limply out on its side. After a second, she realized that he was too still. There was no rise and fall of his chest. Surely, something like that couldn't kill him?!
She sat up and leaned over the shinobi, turning him over onto his back. His eyes were closed. His usual hard expression gone, leaving his face looking soft and younger despite the lines remaining under his tear ducts. Sakura pressed her ear against his chest and listened. At first all she could hear was the rain, but eventually she heard a weak heartbeat. She continued listening. His heart was beating very weak and uneven. She didn't hear any breathing.
Sakura began to panic. What should she do? She still hadn't figured out why she had even dragged him out of the river instead of just leaving him and escaping. This was all his fault, anyways! Everything was always his fault! After all the many times he had told her that he would kill her if she ever tried to run away... Why? Why, then, had he done the opposite?
She had managed to trick Kisame while Itachi had been away. She had thought that the man would have been gone a whole lot longer, but apparently he hadn't gone very far. By the time she had gotten out of Amegakure and encountered the Konoha anbu, she had already felt his chakra pursuing her.
Overwhelming relief had flooded through her at the sight of the shinobi from her home village. But, then Itachi had arrived and started taking out the anbu. Kunai had flown everywhere and Itachi's form blurred with his speed. Without chakra, she was completely helpless. Sakura had tried to stop him from killing them and get them to run away, but then one of them had turned on her. She had been too shocked to counter his attack. Suddenly, Itachi had appeared from nowhere and stuck his arm in front of the blade getting hit instead of her. She had stood there trying to make sense of things as a kunai landed in the dirt beside her. As she heard the sizzling of the paper bomb attached to it, she had looked into the mask of the anbu who had thrown it, wondering why he kept attacking her. It had been to late to jump away, and with the cliff to her back, Itachi to her front-left and the anbu to her front-right, she had nowhere to escape to. She accepted her fate, closing her eyes. The crack of thunder had startled her. She had thought it was the bomb and she had flinched.
Her breath had been knocked out of her by an arm under her ribs pushing her backwards. His breath had been in her ear just before the blast sent the two of them flying backwards... and off the face of the cliff.
"Foolish little girl..."
Sakura flinched back to reality as Itachi's hand twitched. She tore her eyes away from the shredded ends of his Akatsuki cloak and the scorched flesh of his exposed leg. She had spent too long thinking! She placed her head back onto his chest only to hear silence. Her hands shook for only a moment as she panicked. She made her decision and tore away the heavy Akatsuki cloak. She would have to do this the old fashion way, since she didn't have any chakra left. Placing her hands on his chest, she began pumping his heart. She watched his face as she counted out her beats. He still wasn't breathing. She removed her hands and tilted his head back by the chin. The girl hesitated for a split second, but then decided not to let herself think about it as she lowered her lips to his and breathed oxygen into his lungs. She could regret this later. She would rather regret doing it than regret not doing it. Another breath and Itachi jerked, coughing up water. Sakura turned him over to help let the liquid out of his lungs. His back heaved as he took in several haggard breaths. Awkwardly Sakura waved her hand around the kneeling man until she finally just placed it on his back and rubbed to help sooth it.
It was so weird for her to see him like this. Sakura had always seen him as infallible. It had been one of the things she couldn't stand about him. Now, she was seeing that he was just as human as she was. Before her eyes, her ex-captor was completely helpless as his limbs shook and finally gave out beneath him. Itachi was unconscious again, but now Sakura could see the rise and fall of his chest. Sakura leaned over him to check his vitals. When she lifted his face off of the ground where it had fallen, her eyes narrowed at what lay beneath. Along with the mud and flattened blades of grass, Sakura could see crimson liquid being watered down by the rain. There was blood on Itachi's lips,too. That wasn't normal. Poison?
Sakura knew she would need her chakra to be able to fully assess what was going on inside his body, but she was running on empty. If only she had a soldier pill! Sakura's medical knowledge ran through her head and she recalled that some of the ingredients in a soldier pill would replenish chakra by themselves, even though it worked best when they were mixed with the rest of the ingredients. A couple of them were common enough that she might be able to find them nearby in a forest like this one. She looked down at her new patient. She couldn't just leave him here by the side of the river in the pouring rain in his condition as she went hunting through the forest for plants.
Once more, doubting her decision to save the life of the man who had held her captive for over a month, Sakura replaced the muddy cloak around him and began dragging him into the woods. She guessed they were lucky that Itachi was rather light, despite still being bigger and heavier than the kunnoichi. If it had been Kisame, she wouldn't have been able to move the huge shark-man at all. The girl snorted. Ha! If it had been Kisame, she would have left him in the river.
Sakura looked down at the criminal she had just brought back to life, wondering what was wrong with her thought processes. One criminal wasn't different from the next was he? Why would she be willing to help one while she was ready to let the other die? Images flashed in her head from the past month. The dark shadows that had loomed over her just before she had been abducted. The red glow of the sharingan in a dark room upon her awakening. Kisame's grinning shark-face as he threatened to eat her, bones and all if she ever tried to spear him with a fork again. A brief glimpse of Kisame and the blond-haired Akatsuki laughing drunkenly through a cracked open door as she was led back to her room by the Uchiha after a sad escape attempt in the wee hours of the night...
Looking out of her chakra sealed window to see a figure bathed in the moonlight laying back against a tree staring up at the stars. Being caught staring at the moonlit figure as a blank crimson gaze is turned to stare back at her... A finger under her nose as her second attempt to spear the shark (this time with a chopstick) failed, and she wasn't eaten alive; only laughed at... Looking at Itachi, after laying it down on Kisame during a spar, only to see what she could only guess was a smile in his eyes for only a second. Kisame's face turning red when the blond Akatsuki brought it up later at dinner.
Amidst the raindrops running down her face, fresh tears were mixed in. She hadn't seen it while she had still been held captive in their base, but they hadn't treated her all that horrible after all. Now that she was free to go whenever she wished, Sakura hated herself for being able to admit that she had almost enjoyed their company. It scared her to think of what this meant about her. Her conscience was eating her up when she remembered thinking just moments ago that she would have left Kisame in the river to die. It felt like either way she was the horrible one. Horrible for helping and possibly caring about criminals. Horrible for letting them die. But she hadn't let Itachi die. And, though he was a criminal, she could tell that her perception of him had changed since before she had actually known him.
With tears of frustration and self-hate swimming in her eyes, and confused thoughts swimming in her head, Sakura stumbled through the rain. After some time, she came upon an old run-down shed. The inside was bare, but at least it was dry. She laid Itachi down and checked his condition. His breathing was still harsh and in his unconscious state, nothing stopped the pain from being clearly seen on his face. He couldn't remain in this condition. Sakura turned back out into the storm closing up the shed again behind her.
Hastily, the medic dug through the mud for any trace of the plants she needed. Much to her relief, luck was on her side. She found one that would guarantee her to regain some chakra and dug up its roots. She eyed the scraggly bits of root that was covered in clumps of mud. With a sigh, she rubbed it as clean as possible before hesitantly sticking it in her mouth and chewing. She couldn't say it was the worst thing she had ever had to eat, but it definitely made her want to spit it back out and maybe puke a little. She forced all of it down anyways.
She found a couple more of the same plant around the area, and by the time she made it back to the shed, she could feel her body generating chakra at a much higher rate than usual. Already, as she knelt beside the comatose Uchiha, she felt she had enough chakra to use it to examine his bloodstream and organs for poison. She removed the cloak once more and reached for the arm that had gotten stabbed. As soon as she touched his skin, she noticed that his temperature was much hotter than it should be. He had a fever. That, too, was a sign of poison.
Sure enough, as Sakura's chakra entered his bloodstream she could see in her mind's eye the dark substance polluting the healthy white blood cells. When she began inspecting the organs, she found traces of the poison in many of them, but what caught her attention the most was his lungs. He had coughed up blood earlier and now she was looking at the cause. The poison was eating away at his lungs far worse than it was eating away at the rest of him. A list of lung-targeting poisons went through her head. Most poisons on that list required herbs for the antidote that only grew in certain climates. Either that, or the poisons required extracting by the way that she and her shishou practiced. That took alot of chakra, though.
The more she thought about it, the more clear it became to her how dire Itachi's situation really was. As she closely inspected the damaged cells of his lungs, she noticed differences in the way they were deteriorated. Some parts of the lungs even seemed to have been in a deteriorating state for a much longer time. Longer than the time between his poisoning and now. Years.
Realization hit her. He was extremely ill. The painful debilitating kind of ill. The poison wasn't specifically targeting his lungs, they were just especially susceptible to it. Her list of possible poisons changed and she decided it was extremely likely to be one that she could handle. Either way, it had to get out of his bloodstream.
She didn't have enough chakra to do the extraction that way, but there was another that she had enough chakra for. It wouldn't completely get rid of the poison, but it could get rid of enough to save his life in the meantime.
Sakura looked closely at his blood cells with her chakra. Her lips twitched into a smirk. His blood type was AB. She should have guessed.
With this information, she began the process of filtering out the poison in his blood. She slit one of his wrists and turned him on his side, letting the crimson liquid flow out and stain the ground. When his complexion started turning paler and paler, she ripped a strip of her shirt off and turned it into a tourniquet above the crease of her elbow. Next, she formed a string of chakra mixing it with some of her cells until it gained a solid form. It became a functional vein outside of her body. She punctured her arm and attached the newly created vein to the hole in her own artery and the other end to Itachi's unoccupied arm.
After much time had passed, Sakura, feeling quite drained herself, decided to check his bloodstream again. Her inspection showed that most of the poison had exited his body. Looking at his face, she could tell that his pain had extremely diminished. His face was still pale as was her own, now. She began to feel faint herself and knew that she wouldn't be able to take much more of this before she passed out. With shaky hands she undid the connection between them binding the two new cuts they both sported. The ground around them was soaked in Itachi's blood. Slightly unnerved by the sight, she dragged his limp form a couple of feet away so that he was no longer lying in it. With the image out of her head now, the worn out kunnoichi sunk to the ground. Her eyes were heavy and the sound of the rain was lulling her to sleep. She realized that it would be dangerous for them both to be completely off guard and asleep, but she hadn't exactly been too aware before now anyways.
With a sigh, Sakura gave in and laid down using her arm as a pillow. To hell with it... if someone tried to attack them now, she'd put up hardly any more resistance even if she were awake in the sate she was in. Her eyes were on Itachi's face. The way he looked so young...so... innocent... her mind reeled. Innocent? She scoffed at herself. She had seriously lost too much chakra and blood today. That, and the change from his normal demeanor was just so shocking... she couldn't help but wonder... was there something more to this dangerous criminal? Was this the face he always kept hidden? Sakura's consciousness was slipping away from her, yet one last thought flowed around in her mind: She would have to make sure he doesn't die until she can get some answers from him. With a worried smile on her face, the kunnoichi succumbed to sleep under the drumming of the rain on the room, lying beside the most dangerous enemy of her village.
Thanks so much for reading!
Ok this is my very first story. I don't know, yet, if I will leave this as a one-shot or make it a multi-chapter story. I know where I would want to take the story, but I don't know if I should. Reviews would be helpful, I'm still a beginner at writing.