Author's Notes:

Hello Everyone! Thank you for joining me on this journey. I've written the start of many fan-fiction but I almost always become too busy by work or school to take the time to finish them. This time I'm going to do my best to commit and finish writing which is why I'm going to be publishing on here as I do so.

For this first chapter, part of it place in third person, but during Sakura's memories it will take place from her point of view. Hopefully I don't confuse you too much by switching back and forth. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to hearing your feedback. :)

-Alexis Marie

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

A rank scent and the pattering sound of rodents scurrying filled the cold, concrete room. The only light that could be seen emitted from under the closed door and the lack of windows in the room made it impossible to tell time.

She awoke to a cold blackness. Her head was throbbing and it hurt to keep her eyes open. Her knees were barely resting on the ground with most of her body being suspended by her wrists. Blood was long gone from her fingers; there was nothing but a cold tingling sensation from her shoulders up. She quickly discovered that a wire was holding her legs down by her ankles.

Her body hurt in places she forgot existed.

Somewhere off in the distance the sounds of torture echoed through the bare hallways. Although the screams were obviously in pain and terror, the sounds didn't faze her. After all, it was nothing new in this horrible place. Knowing she was being left alone for the time being, she closed her eyes and sank back into the only place she could truly be happy: her memories.

"Ready?" He asked me, eyes scanning me over once before returning to the scroll in his hands.

I nodded and tried to keep a cute smile on my face, but my insides were twisting and hurting. I couldn't understand the pain this man caused me. It was painful to be near him when he was someone in the bingo book, and yet it was still painful even though he was a comrade again. He simply nodded at me back and turned to walk in the direction of our destination.

The pain I had was nothing like having butterflies in my stomach for him when I was younger. This pain was…worse than physical. I swallowed hard and bit back tears as I followed him, watching his spiky hair bounce with every leap he took from branch to branch in the tree-tops. Why did he cause me so much pain? I should be happy, shouldn't I? He was a comrade again, running an errand for our Hokage Kakashi, and I was accompanying him.

I tasted blood and quickly brought my hand up to my mouth. Shoot. I didn't even notice I was biting my lip and now I was bleeding. I quickly summoned chakra to my fingertips and healed my bloody lip. It was certainly a good thing I wasn't beside Sasuke, or he would have noticed and probably asked me about it.

Or he would ignore it.

My insides twisted again.

How would he react to me being hurt now? Would he care, like he did when we were younger? Or would he simply ignore me like he did during the early part of the war with Madara? Does he care about anyone except himself and Naruto? It was just so hard to read him…

I let out a quiet sigh. All I wanted was to run up to him, hug him and cry like I would have when we were twelve and thirteen. Cry because I was upset with all the pain I was in, cry because I was happy he was back, and cry because I was frustrated I could never speak my mind around him. The only thing holding me back was that I knew he wouldn't probably shrug me off. I couldn't bare being rejected again.

I shook my head. I couldn't think like that anymore. Sasuke was a comrade, and nothing more. He did not come back to his village for me, for Kakashi, or for any of our friends. He came back because of Naruto, and Naruto alone. Neither of them would tell me what happened during their battle, only the aftermath. All Naruto said was that Sasuke, "finally saw the light again," and left it at that. I tried pressing for more information, but Naruto refused to say any more and would instantly switch the subject whenever I asked. For a while I debated asking Sasuke, but realized that if Naruto, someone as close as a brother wouldn't tell me, there was no way Sasuke would.

It had been two months since the war ended, and I was no more comfortable with him than I was when we first returned to the village. Luckily I was kept busy for a while, tending to countless wounded from all five nations. However, despite the fact that it had been a few months, we still were finding bodies as well as survivors within the rubble of the war zone.

That was the mission we were sent on. Sasuke was earning his rights back by helping wounded from every village, and I, the top medic, was supposed to accompany him whenever he was sent on a search and rescue. We all doubted there would be anyone posed to attack us seeing as the five nations were still in a truce, so Kakashi always sent small teams of two or three out to cover a larger area quicker. For whatever reason, he refused to pair me with anyone but Sasuke. Whenever I've asked to be put on a team with someone else, Kakashi would wave his hand at me and say something like, "No one else will trust him like you will, I simply can't pair him with anyone else." When I'd bring up Naruto as an option, he would point out that Naruto wasn't a medic, and that it made more sense for him to go with Hinata.

So I was stuck with the one person I really, really didn't want to be stuck with on a mission. I was pretty sure he felt the same way, despite his blank face whenever Kakashi announced I would be the medic to go with him.

Sasuke suddenly lost his footing on a branch in front of me which brought me back to the real world. He flipped over and gracefully landed on the ground—with me right after him.

"Are you alright?" I asked, scanning his body for any injuries I may not have noticed previously—particularly staring at his ankles.

"I'm fine. Let's just keep moving." He spat out, shrugging me off and walking passed me.

My eyebrows furrowed and my fists clenched. I was rooted in my spot, glaring at the ground and fighting tears as my insides pounded me with pain.

It was always like this. Any time something happened and I came to his aide he would coldly shrug me off. I struggled to control my emotions that were screaming at me to yell, cry, and do something, anything to release them.

"Sakura."

"What?" I snapped back, not daring to look at him.

"…I'm sorry. Again."

My eyes shot open, fists relaxed, and insides untwisted, but my eyebrows furrowed harder. I glanced over toward him to see him in a similar posture that I was in. His fists were clenched, and he looked like he was struggling to speak his mind.

"I'm not used to…this." He sighed, attempting to release the tension in his body. It didn't work. "If anyone was kind to me, they had an ulterior motive."

My face softened. This was the most he had opened up to me since he had been back. This also told me something about him that I didn't know before. He was trying. He was really, really trying to integrate back into a "normal" life. I swallowed hard and walked up to him, my heart in my throat. His eyes were focused on a rock, but when I got within a foot of him, he glanced over at me and then quickly looked back away.

I sadly smiled, knowing he was extremely uncomfortable. So instead of hugging him, or speaking back to him, I reached out and grabbed his right hand—his only hand—and pulled him with me as I continued to our destination.

Although we said nothing for the rest of the way there, with his hand in mine, the silence was finally comfortable.

The huge croak of the door woke her up. Painfully, she opened her eyes toward the shadowed figure that stood in the now-lit doorway. By his chakra signature she instantly knew it was one of the few men she absolutely hated in this world, Daisuke. He had short, black hair and bright green eyes. He was someone whom she would have considered extremely handsome if she didn't know how horrible he was. She could practically hear the smirk on his sick face.

"Ready for your daily medicine?"

In the beginning she would have scoffed, spit at him, hurled something at him, or insulted him. Now, she hung silent in her bonds, knowing that any such action was completely and utterly useless. Not to mention, she currently lacked the strength and will to perform any of those tasks. Daisuke strolled over to her happily, and began wiping her arm in a small spot with some sort of cleaning cloth to prep it for her typical sleep-inducing shot.

She wasn't even sure she'd have the strength to attempt to get away if they kept her awake…but after the last few times when she had caused an immense amount of damage, even in an exhausted state, they certainly weren't going to take any more chances. And so, moments after being injected, she quickly fell into a dreamless state.

The next time she opened her eyes she was in Daisuke's ever-so-familiar laboratory. She was in a chair that resembled a dentist office chair, only this one included chakra-draining restraints. Her upper arms, wrists, forehead, stomach, hips, thighs and ankles were bound to the chair. While this might seem excessive, it was absolutely necessary to have all of them in place. Daisuke and the others had learned the hard way that Sakura could be quite the escape artist when she wasn't completely restrained.

She lay, unmoving and spiritually broken as Daisuke did his daily ritual of injecting her with new substances and watching to see how her body, blood, and chakra network reacted. Usually she would try to remain as still as possible, but sometimes that just wasn't doable. Occasionally her body would convulse, or go into shock or have a seizure. There was simply no telling how she would react to whatever he was giving her. Many times she blacked out and woke back up in her cell. She had been told she had gone into rages, killing many shinobi within the base and woken up with no memory of doing such things. Waiting to see how she responded, Sakura went back into the happy place inside her head.

After that last search-and-rescue mission, Sasuke would let me do my job as a medic and look him over. He was always extremely tense, which made things awkward, but I was very careful with him and tried to finish as quickly as possible to make him comfortable again.

The village was also getting back to normalcy, with shops re-opening and people walking the streets once more. When I wasn't working in the hospital or doing house-calls as a doctor, I was with Naruto and Sasuke. We worked out together, ate together and stargazed together from on top of the Hokage Mountain three or four days out of the week.

Six months after the war, in the hot July weather, Naruto and I had a huge surprise for Sasuke. We were walking through the village to have lunch at Ichiraku, but this time we took a different route than usual. This part of the village was usually empty, for very good reason. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sasuke tense when he realized the path we were headed down, but he said nothing. A huge smile came to my face, he had no idea what was coming.

My smile instantly faltered as Naruto suddenly punched Sasuke in the face.

"What the hell, Naruto?!" Sasuke yelled, blocking a second punch and attempting to return another.

"Quit dodging! I have to hit you seventeen more times!"

I hit my forehead with my palm. Naruto has such a way of showing his affection…

"What?!" Sasuke yelled again, confused.

"It's for your birthday so take it like a man!"

To that, Sasuke growled and the two continued fighting with each other until Sasuke got a good hit on him, which sent Naruto into a nearby fence—putting a huge hole in it.

"OKAY! That's enough!" I yelled, leaving Naruto behind and grabbing Sasuke's hand. He didn't pull away or flinch; leading him by his hand was something that was considered normal now. "Naruto is such an idiot. I swear one day I'm going to kill him." I mumbled, and I heard Sasuke let out a tiny breath of laughter in response which made me smile.

We turned a corner and suddenly Sasuke's hand pulled back, and I almost fell back into him. He didn't let go of my hand, but he did root his feet into the ground. He was staring at the freshly painted, bright, white and red Uchiha fan on the side of a newly built wall. He swallowed and I saw countless emotions running through his eyes. I gave his hand a quick squeeze, which caused him to look down at me, and softly pulled him forward through the gated archway in front of us.

After I pulled him through, I let go of his hand and stepped back, knowing he would need some time alone to process what was in front of him. "Happy Birthday Sasuke."

To our left was a beautiful rock shrine surrounded by dark green grass. On the rock was etched every single member of the Uchiha clan who passed away during the massacre, as well as Itachi Uchiha. To the right of that was a large, newly built home with a red bow on the front door. Surrounding the home were several other empty plots of land.

Silently, Sasuke stepped toward the shrine and began reading the names on it. I stood watching in silence as he did so, and Naruto soon joined me. It took lots of fighting with the elders for us to get the records of Sasuke's clan, but now all those efforts were paying off. Sasuke stared at the shrine for a long time, until I decided it was time to show him the house. I walked over to the front door, Naruto following me, and we called Sasuke's name. As though he were in a trance, his head snapped up and looked over at us. I smiled softly and waved him over. He hesitantly walked to us, and Naruto stuck out his fist at him as he approached, offering a key.

Without missing a beat, Sasuke took the key and unlocked the door, stepping inside.

Naruto broke the thick silence. "We're going to take our leave, Sasuke. I've got stuff to do with Kakashi and I know Sakura is busy as well. If you have any questions for us come find us okay?"

He didn't wait to get a response, and took off, expecting me to go after him. But I hesitated. I knew Sasuke needed to process, but I wasn't so sure he wanted to be alone. His fingers were twitching, and something about him was calling me. He…needed someone right now. I wasn't sure if that someone was me, but I knew he needed some kind of outlet for the emotions overtaking him.

I swallowed down my hesitation, and confidently embraced him from behind, just like that time in the Forest of Death. He instantly tensed at my touch, but then he quickly turned toward me and wrapped his arm around me tightly. My eyes widened as he held as tight as he could with his only arm, letting out a shaky breath. "Thank you." He whispered, tugging at my heart strings.

We held each other for a long while after that, and I've thought about that moment ever since.

The unusual sound of an explosion made her hearing perk. She forced her tired eyes open and looked around. She was back in her cell, tied exactly the same way again. On her face and body she could feel fresh wounds, certain to be bruises. Her head was pounding.

She must have blacked out again.

The deafening creak of the door and the new light caused her head to throb even more. She would have tightly closed her eyes and shrunk back away from the door as much as her constraints would allow, but her exhausted body refused to listen to her. Malnourished and drained of chakra—almost anything that touched her now felt like she was being punched. She simply hung lifeless in her bonds, awaiting the inevitable torture that was coming once more.

She blinked her eyes back open as soon as she felt the wire around her ankles disappear. It killed her head to use her eyes with the bright light in the room, but her curiosity exceeded her pain. She didn't recognize this man. Suddenly her arms were released, causing her to fall like a rag doll toward the concrete floor. She must have already been sedated before she woke up. A pair of strong arms caught her before she hit her head, and she whimpered softly in pain and fear. They must be taking her to be experimented on again.

The person picked her up bridal-style and as soon as her head hit the person's chest she saw nothing but black.

Sometime later, she awoke again with a hot wind on her body. She shivered and forced her eyes open to take in her new surroundings. Her arms were awkwardly bent inwards, resting on her chest, her legs were crossed at her ankles, and someone was carrying her with an arm under her shoulders and her knees. The green of trees was whirring past her so quickly that she had to shut her eyes again.

Attempting to adjust, she looked up towards whom she assumed was her captor, but the bright sun directly behind the person's head cast their entire face in shadow. She was extremely confused—she hadn't been allowed outside for as long as she could remember. The person said nothing to acknowledge that she was awake and her head hurt too much to discern who it was, so she simply closed her eyes once more and drifted off, pretending she was back home.

"You know you should have been thrown in jail for what you did. The only reason you're standing here is because of your assistance in the war, and of course due to Naruto and my appeals." Kakashi lectured as team seven stood together at the gates of the village. "Just...don't do anything stupid this time, or I'm going to be the one to take the blame for it."

"Yeah…thanks."

Naruto stepped forward then, handing Sasuke something. Its silver plate reflected the sun brightly.

"You…still have that?" Sasuke asked incredulously, staring at his old, scratched Konoha headband.

"Of course." Naruto smiled, "I think it's time I returned it."

Sasuke nodded and took it, putting it inside his weapons pouch.

I bit my lip and put my hands behind my back, unsure how I was going to approach this conversation. "Do you really have to go?" I asked, sounding more pathetic than I had hoped. "Tsunade is almost finished with an artificial arm for you…"

"I do." He stared at me with eyes that seemed to read through my soul. "I want to see the world without eyes clouded with hatred. I want to see all the things I missed before."

"Well…" I bit my lip again, "What would you say if I asked to come with you?"

He sighed, "This journey is also one of redemption for me, Sakura. My sins have nothing to do with you."

I childishly slumped my shoulders, staring at the ground. "Nothing to do with me…huh?"

Suddenly my heart sped up as two fingers pushed my forehead up and remained on my head. He gave me a rare smile, "I'll see you when I get back…and thank you."

Instantly I felt myself blush—those two words would always have more meaning between us than anyone else would ever know.

After that the three of us, Kakashi, Naruto and myself, watched our friend and comrade walk off once again; however this time there was a promise to return.

And that was the last time I saw him...

Before I was taken.