Drowning in Mud, a naruto fanfic

To the Senshi. But mostly, to Chloe. Quit worrying and be glitterful instead, smooches.

Drowning in Mud

Konoha is gone.

She is dirty, bloody, sweaty and sore. Her wounds sting and her bruises ache and Konoha—Konoha is gone.

There are no traces—there are no majestic gates towering over her, reaching as high up as the trees, cocooning the village almost protectively. There is no village—no houses, no main street, no Hokage tower and no Ichiraku's. There isn't an Academy and there is no fateful bench.

Everything is gone.

Replaced by dirt and soot and smoke and destruction. Leaving no trace but the base of where it all once stood, leaving nothing but the idea—the history—that it was once there.

Sakura drops to her knees, eyes blank, chapped pink lips half-opened and her arms lying limp at her sides.

Konoha is gone.

And Sakura screams until she is positive she leaves her throat raw. And she continues to scream, even after that—until she coughs up blood and until she chokes on it. And even then, she continues to scream.

Days are black and bleak.

Sakura does not wander into the forest.

She stays by her home—because this enormous piece of dead land is home. This is where she was born and raised, where she inherited the will of fire and protected it with the best of her abilities. This is where the story all began. This is all she has left.

And she swears she hears the screaming, at night.

She swears the massacre goes through, every night—the massacre of the village hidden in the leaves. Sakura can hear it—Sakura, the only surviving leaf native, proudly wearing the headband around her forehead, letting the insignia live on because it is all she can do to keep from cracking. To keep from breaking into little shards and dying and allowing it all to end.

Sakura looks up at the sky, for the very first time, through the leaves of the trees.

It's red, like blood.

The clouds are black, like sin.

This isn't her world anymore and how she has survived is unknown, even to Sakura herself.

She lowers her head down and cries.

She isn't ashamed of crying, anymore.

With everything she loved lost.

With everyone she loved gone.

…What would anyone have her do?

She isn't found until the third day of her arrival to what is left of Konoha.

Sakura isn't awake to witness it and she is not awake to realize she's being taken away. But her body feels it and it translates into her dreams.

She dreams about falling. It isn't free falling, down from the sky—never ending and almost soothing. It is not free falling into a black void and it is not dropping to her doom from a building, endless of feet up in the sky.

This one is about falling from a cliff, sloped and jagged with sharp edges and torturous; with her sides being ripped open and blood streaming out of her like waterfalls. Like being made out of porcelain and shattering piece by piece as she continues to fall. Like being made out of strings and the further down she goes, her body unravels, pieces of the string getting stuck to the rocks and she slowly turns into nothing but a single string and nothing more.

And she wakes up.

The sky is a dark red—night.

And the trees are shadows laughing at her for being caught.

But her captor is lost in the sea of dark and Sakura doesn't struggle.

"Where am I?"

Nothing but a croak, an incoherent rasp that not even the most skilled shinobi can decipher.

She tries to lift her head up but it proves to be too much of a struggle, too much of a burden, and far, far too heavy. She gulps air and every greedy intake causes her body to ache like acid running through her system.

She's sitting—no, she is laying— somewhere and the surface is rough, cold and moist; concrete rather than dirt and the air smells of blood and hate mixed with pine. Sakura clenches her eyes shut and groans, but everything hurts and nothing is numb enough to cancel the endless amount of pain.

"Where am I?" she repeats, voice a bit stronger.

Sakura swears she has been out cold for days.

Her reply is a simple one, the voice too low and soothing to allow her to recognize it, to put a face to it, a gender—anything. It is simple, a single word uttered. One syllable.

"Home."

She is not fed.

Sakura feels herself grow weaker and weaker and she has to wonder whether she should even bother fighting it at all. What would the point be, she asks herself, opening her eyes and staring at the ground. What reason is there to fight for? For who?

Herself, she replies, but it isn't enough anymore.

So she lies on the ground and withers.

"You're not any fun if you're not struggling."

Sakura hears something like creaks; like a rusty bar door opening and closing and she finally understands.

She has been taken captive; a prisoner kept for reasons lost to her. A bounty over her head, perhaps, but who is alive enough to offer anything at all? And for what? For being a member of Team Seven once upon a time when Konoha was still at its prime and her teammates weren't dead and gone?

The importance of her once upon a team should not matter anymore.

Sakura tries to lift her head up, but decides that it is too much of a trouble.

"Was told to feed you," the voice without a face goes on. "Get you into shape or something like that."

"Why?" she whispers in question.

"Why not?"

She tries to shrug, but nothing really happens. Sakura's about to close her eyes and give into the feeling of sinking when a spoon nears her face, the tip coaxing her mouth open. She accepts it, labels the food rice by the texture against her tongue, but she does not enjoy it and lets it all out halfway through her meal.

"You made a mess," her captor comments.

Sakura closes her eyes.

She's not exactly sure how long she has been in the cell, but she is finally feeling a bit stronger. Food is forced down her throat like reversed torture and she can feel her chakra pumping in her veins. Her hair has grown longer—tangled and stringy and dirty and longer. Her meals are brought at the same time every day and the only way she can tell is because of the miniscule of light that peeps into the jail from the hole on the bottom corner of the door.

Sakura drops onto her back, her hands twisted in a painful way but she swears she doesn't feel it.

She begins to whisper a song.

"Look at you," her captor coos.

Sakura stares at her—it's a girl, not much older than her. She wears glasses that slip down the slope of her nose and she pushes up with the back of her forefinger; her hair is long and red and her eyes are a dark maroon, like blood. She's never mistreated her while in her care. She makes sure to nurture her back into health even while being sarcastic and rude with her comments.

She's pretty, Sakura decides, staring at her with a glazed look in her eyes.

From a certain angle, she looks like Naruto.

"You look nice and healthy," she goes on, her captor, closing the barred door behind her. She squats down in front of her, placing the tray in the space between them. "I want to ask your name. But I've been a jailer before—and for a long while; let me tell you—to know that I shouldn't."

Sakura stares at her, sparing her food a glance before returning her eyes to the girl in front of her.

"What," she croaks out, lips beginning to bleed from how chapped they are. "What's yours?"

The girl smiles at her, sharp and wicked, before she stands up turning around with a toss of her hair and a ruffle of her cloak.

"That isn't allowed, either."

"Where are we?"

"Does it really matter? Everything's the same now—there's no here or there; just an everywhere."

"Wha—why was the sky red… I remember the sky being red… Why…?"

"This is the new world, love."

"New… World…?"

"New Shinobi World."

"We… We lost…? We lost—everyone is dead?"

"Precisely."

Sakura sits in the farthest corner of her cell and ponders—thinks and assumes and illustrates the death of every single person that she cared about.

On her tongue is the bitter, metallic tang of defeat.

The days pass.

And they are all repetitive.

Sakura fingers her food, whenever it comes.

She doesn't find herself to be hungry.

And she doesn't cry.

She doesn't see a point to it anymore.

Not when there isn't anything to cry for.

Time passes.

Outside, the seasons change—at least she thinks—and the sky continues to be red.

He comes when she is finally lost.

She's staring at the same spot she stares at every single day, arms hiding in between her thighs, knees bent and legs pulled close to her body. Her hair curtains her in ragged, dirty waves, strands falling to cover her face like a mask. She hears the door open but she doesn't care. It's a far away noise she catches only by a sliver of chance.

There are no steps afterwards and the screech the barred door makes goes through deaf ears.

He's crouched down in front of her, all dark hair and pale skin and red eyes.

He can look familiar, if she wes actually paying attention.

He can look like someone she once knew.

But she only catches splotches of color, no sharp lines and elegant slopes or clinical blood-red eyes studying her and her unraveling.

"Who would have thought," he says, voice gruff and thick with sin. "Who would have thought little Sakura would be the only one to survive."

She comes back to focus and her eyes zero in on his face—still young and still so achingly beautiful and shadowed with hate. Sakura reaches up with trembling hands, her chains clinking at the movements; she touches her finger against his jawline and smiles.

She's whispering a song to herself, rocking from side to side; eyes glazed and stare set on the rust on one of the bars caging her in. Next to her sits her tray of food, a meal half eaten and a cup of water gulped to the last drop.

Someone sits behind her and Sakura flinches at the close proximity. But she doesn't move, doesn't turn around to see who could possibly be behind her. It makes no difference, she thinks... Or allows herself to think at some point in her dull, never ending day.

It makes no difference.

She hears the sound of metal being pulled out and she focuses long enough to ask herself if she is going to get killed. She does not feel fear and she welcomes her demise with opened arms.

But it never comes. Instead, she hears shredding of some sort—soft and almost soothing. A short breeze would tickle the knobs of her spine and a decrease of weight pulling her head back. Sakura snaps back into focus then, letting out a loud guttural gasp and a cry of, "Ino!"

She lifts her hand up and pulls it back, blindly reaching.

"Shit," hisses the person behind her and she is pushed forwards.

Sakura pulls her hand back and looks down at the blood that begins to pool in her palm. She hears a sigh before an arm littered with bite-mark shaped scars is shoved in her face and Sakura feels her head pounding.

"Bite."

She does so.

The girl from before—the Naruto-look-alike—stares at her with an annoyed expression, yanks at her wrist and rubs the blood clean onto her shorts.

The process of her haircut is done in complete silence.

No one has ever touched her hair but Ino. But Sakura had forgotten that Ino is dead.

Sakura is carried outside by a bulky man—thrown over his thick shoulder and tightly held there until the air is squeezed out of her. She is dropped down on the cold dirt ground with careful ease and Sakura kneels there for some time, eyes filled with stinging tears at having light pierce her retinas.

"Stand up."

Sakura doesn't think she can, even if she wants to.

"Stand up, Sakura."

She shakes her head and sobs, curling into herself and trying to hide behind her short hair.

There is an annoyed sigh, "Get her back inside."

She is brought out every single day, after that.

But she doesn't stand until the sixteenth.

Her legs are wobbly and asleep and the pebbles and twigs are merciless to the soles of her feet. She quietly to herself, her chains ringing with each one of her clumsy steps. The sky is still crimson and the clouds are still black—everything looks shaded and ominous and it sends shivers down her spine and it prickles her skin.

"Look around."

"Why?" she whispers.

There is silence. A flock of birds fly over them—crows, actually. What is it that they would say about crows? She can't remember.

"To see if you're worth the trouble."

On the eighteenth day she runs away.

Her speed is nothing compared to what it once had been, when life was still normal and the sky was still blue. Her chained hands don't help her in her escape. But no one chases after her and it isn't long before she drops to the ground, gulping for air.

She is brought back later that night, when the sky is the darkest of red.

Her captor drags her by the leg the entire way and Sakura feels blood trickle into her ear after a nasty collision with a sharp rock.

"I don't know why Sasuke doesn't just kill you." He chuckles. "Probably having too much fun killing your spirit, that asshole."

Since the first time he appeared in her cell, she hasn't allowed herself to think his name or anything that has to do with him.

But since her white-haired captor drawled his name she can't seem to shake it off; it is stuck on her like the grime on her skin and the tears in her clothes.

Sasuke.

She grits her teeth and clenches her hands and growls. Sakura lifts herself from the ground of her cell and begins to pace back and forth, grinding her molars and clenching her hands into fists.

There is nothing to live for, she thinks.

There isn't—but she will live for herself. Someway and somehow in this new world ruled by hatred and rage and despair, she'll do it.

She is taken out again some time after her first attempt to flee.

She knows Sasuke, the girl that looks like Naruto, the white haired guy and the bulky one are behind her, waiting for her to stand from the ground.

And she does so. And she runs.

She runs away every time she is brought out, each attempt increasing her speed and her knowledge of where to turn and where she can hide.

Each attempt, she is brought back by the white haired guy, dragging her by the leg or her hair or in any way that could hurt her.

"Why only me?" she asks him one night when he comes to her cell.

She is bleeding from a cut on the side of her forehead but the trickle of her blood doesn't bother her.

He smirks at her, mockingly and filled with hate. "Wasn't my doing. You'd be as good as dead like the rest if it were up to me."

"Then why aren't I?"

His smirk stretches a bit and Sakura wishes—oh how she wishes—she can punch it right out of his face. And then kiss it back on, like glue. And, oh, how it all disgusts her. How loving this cruel monster disgusts her, yet she does it anyway. It fills her up with anger and sorrow and regret and defeat.

"I'm intrigued."

It is all a game to him, she knows.

So when they take her out, next, she treats it as a race and puts all her energy onto her legs and runs and runs and runs and even after she is out of breath she continues to run.

This time, she isn't brought in.

"She'll be back."