Not a pairing, per say, but I've always wondered about Zaku's thoughts on Sakura's bite. Set near the end of the Chuunin exams. Leave lots of reviews!
Disclaimer: I have no rights to this.
Flesh in Her Teeth
My life meant nothing in the end. I died at the hand of a man who I would have once called a father. He used me, sucked my life out for an impure summoning. Raising those up who should have stayed down.
Nothing to show for my fourteen years, I could feel my life seeping out of me faster than I could hope to save it. I could not pull my arms free, and as I tried, I looked at them.
There was a faintly traced, bumpy, outline on my left arm, still bruised like the blood in my body thought it had a chance to continue living. A fading bite mark and I'm painfully reminded of her.
She'd risked everything for those she sought to serve, like me. She'd tricked me, feinting at every turn, until the one time she didn't, and instead careened into me, crushing me and taking my flesh into her teeth.
She clamped tightly onto me, like she meant to eat me, and it was all I could do to dislodge her.
Her head felt like cracking concrete as I hit her, again and again, pummelling her with a clenched fist. She had her eyes shut, jaws clenched and body tense.
She was tenacious, and it's now, as my very life's chakra is being sucked from me by a madman, that I think of her.
She who had the courage to touch me.
Before, when I lived in the streets, a kind hand was never extended. A soothing palm never brushed my feverish brow. A mother's embrace or a father's reassuring hand were never mine. People touched me with hard fists and sharp weapons.
Orochimaru never touched us, any of us, any more than he had to. I had grown accustomed to feeling the cold air around me, in me, feeling only the brush of wind and sound.
Her warmth astounded me, I think. She was alive, she was warm, she was stubborn. She would not surrender her touch on me. And even though she sought to hurt me, just like the others, I do not begrudge her for it. Her's was the last human warmth I had to call my own.
I can almost feel the phantom pain in my hand as I punch her, again and again, in the skull. I wanted her off me; she was an annoyance, a pest, an inferior creature.
What wouldn't I give to have her warmth on me again? She was so human, alive, and the irony does not escape me that shortly from now, I will not be. She bit me, she touched me, and she fought me.
Will she remember me?
Will anyone remember me? Will she? When her hair, such a ridiculous pink, grows long again, will she forget when Kin held it in her hand? When her head stops aching, will she forget my fist trying to crush her? When the taste of my flesh fades from her mouth, will she forget me?
I hope not.
And that is my last absolute truth. Perhaps it is because it is the last, that it is the greatest, most absolute, truth. I hope she will remember me.
Not as a foe, although I could not fault her for it, because what was I to her but an enemy? But I hope she will remember me as… As a man. As a boy.
For that is what I am, Lord Orochimaru. As you wring the life from my very cells, you must know that it is a young one. I am but fourteen years old, and I will die here. I will die at the hands of a man who I once thought my idol. I will die.
I will die, and I will die with my greatest wish having been that a pink-haired girl will remember me, even after the taste of flesh in her teeth has faded away.