A/N: Sasuke and Sakura's story. It's canon-compliant, but the writing is so drastically darker than canon writing that it might as well be AU. I meant for it to be a lighter piece but turns out I get off on my characters suffering instead so…

Please review or comment if you can. Criticisms especially welcomed, I'm a pretty new writer and I'm very interested in honing the craft.

Trigger Warnings: Lots and lots of triggers, read this baby if you love some cathartic dysphoria. Rape. Molestation. Stalking. Murder. Body dismemberment. Self Mutilation. Drug Abuse. Panic Attacks. Suicide attempts. Suicide success. Major PTSD (this beginnings of this fic pretty much rides on it.) I could go on. This series is angst central.

© All characters, setting, and material concepts created by Masashi Kishimoto. I did not write Naruto. This is a fan made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.


Sakura lost her innocence in a way no person ever should, but in a way that too many kunoichi did all the same.

It was after the remnants of Team 7 had tried to retrieve Sasuke and yet again failed. His painstaking laugh and attempts on their lives still came to her as nightly visions, disturbing her sleep.

"Forehead, are you sure you're okay?" Ino had asked. And Sakura insisted she was.

"I can tell when you're lying, kid, so quit bull shitting me," Tsunade told her between swigs of a blue bottle. "I'm going to give you something easy, just to keep your mind off of things. I think you could use it." Sakura didn't protest.

And when she was sent on a mission that should have been child's play with Neji, Shino, and Ino, she shouldn't have found herself in this predicament: chakra depleted from the sloppy use of poorly timed punches and jutsus, body marred with open wounds that she didn't trust her muddled head to heal with necessary precision. Probably suffering from a low grade poisoning too.

But all she felt was the weight of Shikamaru's request, Kakashi's contrition, Naruto's burden. And all she saw was Sasuke. SasukeSasukeSasuke—his expression a coalescence of suffering and amusement, the blue heat of his fingertips surging towards her skull.

She saw his red eyes peering down as she lied panicked and helpless on that cold floor. His Sharingan was blazing, black stars spiraling. They belittle her, tell her that she's worthless—Who the hell are you going to save? You can't even save yourself. Sakura didn't want to believe them but his cool indifference towards her was right all along and there was nothing that could refute it now. She was on the wooden floorboards of a motel and she was going to die by two low ranking, defected shinobi.

"She's injured and chakra depleted," one of the shinobi said, his long auburn hair draped across his face like a curtain made of dried blood. "This is over."

The other shinobi pinned her with a grin so wide it mocked every notion that sanity ever existed. "Finally!" he said while he wiped the sweat off his brow, smearing her blood and debris on his face. "Let's have some fun with her, eh Rishu?"

Sakura felt her head throb and suddenly her stomach churned with something other than pain. The red haired shinobi declined with a casual annoyance. "You're disgusting." He turned away. "Don't take too long, I doubt she came alone. Hanja might need reinforcements."

"Pfft. Hanja's a powerhouse, he'll be fine."

"Don't take long," he repeated.

And then she was alone with a man with short brown hair, deep purple eyes, and a maniacal grin. She panted hard, her body stiff, and her vision hazed. Her panicked pulse drummed out all other noise, demanding for her to move.

But she couldn't. She was petrified from the way his eyes roamed over her, how his tongue peeked out to lick his lips.

He walked towards her with slow strides, a delirious sort of amusement on his face. Sakura could see the expression bare, his head blurring against the white wall, the white ceiling, and the white-hot pain.

"You look like someone I used to know," he said aloud, studying her with a wistful smile. "Not your hair, definitely not your hair," he rectifies, as if the idea of him knowing another person with pink hair was the most preposterous possible facet of their interaction. "But you have her face..."

He leaned over her then, and she inhaled sharp, lungs decaying inside her ribs. He cupped her cheek, and she flinched from the cold, callous feel of his thumb tracing over the fullness of her cheek.

"Even your eyes kind of look like hers." His voice was low, suspiciously soft. His lips pulled back over slightly yellowed teeth, and his glossy eyes roamed over her. She didn't like it—felt terribly naked.

"You're so beautiful," he said, a sweet confession, and Sakura made a noise—the beginnings of a sob. "She was too." His hand traveled lower, smearing a path of red down her neck. "Want to know a secret?" He asked, velvet lilac eyes distantly tracing the path along her throat. Sakura briefly wondered if he was going to strangle her.

"Someone told me once that the dead can only speak if you bother to listen. There's a switch to turn it off, if you try hard enough." He traced his fingers along her collar bone, his hands coming to rest on her small shoulders. "But I don't know how to stop. I don't think I even want to. She's everywhere. Speaking to me."

He grabbed hold of the zipper of Sakura's top.

"And today, it's through you."

He started to tug it down.

Something inside Sakura snapped, and with a renewed strength, she grabbed a kunai within reach. She desperately tried to stave him off, swerving the weapon at his arm and then his legs, and surprised them both when she actually managed to lodge the better half of the blade into his thigh.

A savage cry tore from his throat and his fist pounded her head onto the floor—reflexively at first, but then he does it again and again, until the pain doesn't even register anymore and she just heard the loud thund... thund... thund.

"Damn bitch!" He growled, removing the kunai with a yelp. He chucked the weapon across the room before wrenching both of her wrists towards him. There was a stark snap, and suddenly she was screaming louder than she ever thought she could.

He let out a boisterous laugh, "Well shit," his voice was muffled by the billows of pain stretching through her body. "Your face sure doesn't look like hers now!" Something in his voice bordered relief, his howling echoing through the room. "Too bad," he said. "It was so pretty. How am I going to enjoy this now?"

She winced as she felt cold steel slipping under her clothes, followed by the sound of ripping. Mortified, she felt a sudden chill over the expanse of her stomach and breasts as he cut away at her clothes. Without fault, he proceeded to grope her petite body.

Sakura felt her throat closing up, making horror driven sounds in protest. Her aching body was coming alive in a set of rapid convulsions, begging to reverberate to another place. His breath was hot and his tongue was slimy as he pressed searing kisses onto her neck. Everything was red.

Sakura tried to pretend she wasn't there, staring up at a chip in the white ceiling. She thought of how good she once thought it felt to be cradled in her okaasan's arms. "My sweet, sweet child," she would say, during the times Sakura felt anything but. The smell of autumn wafting through their window. Her dad would mock her cousins in a pathetic attempt to make her feel like her chosen shinobi lifestyle was a good one.

"She didn't make it very far. Probably died around your age," his voice was a crisp cut into her, his hands a slow burn as they roughly wandered her body. She felt them everywhere and she was trembling so hard then, she wondered why she wasn't able to shake them off. "She was my first love, you know...I always wondered what she would have felt like. Maybe you can show me?"

She cried out when she felt his hands hook beneath the bands of her shorts and skirt. She pathetically tried to kick him off. "Don't!"

As if on cue, he rammed his fist into her face again, her head smacking against the floor and blacking her vision for some of the longest seconds in her life.

"Gods, you think you'd learn!" He reprimanded, before cutting away the remnants of her bottoms too. Sakura began to sob.

Her eyes clenched shut, and she could hear him fumble with his own clothing before something both rigid and fleshy pressed into a part of her that she hardly even knew existed. A cry turned to a yelp as he tried to push himself inside of her with a grunt. There was a tight, burning sensation, and then—to her relief—it stopped.

She was so dry that the nukenin had to coat his member with his own saliva after the failed attempt. She was finally talking then, whimpering nonsense. She wasn't exactly sure what was coming out of her mouth, just hoping one of her words would make him stop.

Maybe he had become mute in that moment, because he didn't seem to be responding. Just stared down between her legs while drooling globs of spit onto his hand. Then he wrapped his fingers around himself and pumped, shuffling closer. Sakura could hear a mantra inside, something distant, a voice beyond hers whispering, No no no no no.

Suddenly, Sakura felt the start of the burning sensation again. And then it amplifies tenfold and Sakura is screaming. She didn't mean to, but it fucking hurts. She was tense and it was dry, and then he was thrusting deep inside of her like none of it even mattered—using her body as if she didn't live inside of it.

He was urged by her shrieks, thrusting faster and harder. "Fuck!" he cried. "You're so tight!" She gasped with each rock of his hips, the scorching sensation spiraling through her core and cutting into every crevice of her immobilized body.

"P-Please! I'll d-do... anything!" Sakura stuttered through wet sobs, her voice hoarse and raw. She couldn't even register how pathetic she sounded, the burning was so bad. "Just please sto-"

He smashed his fist into her head again, "Shut up!" He roared. He shifted his hips and pounded into her in a frenzy then, as if to punish her for even entertaining the idea.

Sakura couldn't stop crying, his every movement torching through her nerves, like acid was eating her flesh from the inside. She wants to disappear. She needs to disappear.

He was moaning, screeching in pleasure, and every noise left her ears bleeding. "Fuck! So good, so fucking…" She'd never forget this. She'd never, it was going to follow her after he kills her. It was going to—

Sakura felt him suddenly go still. There was a fixed moment of just his hot breath fanning down, the pain throbbing between her legs, and her sobs wracking her body. Then he pulled out of her.

She dared to open her eyes, and found him mechanically grab the kunai he had used to cut her clothes with. Sakura felt painful palpitations and it made it hard for her to focus but the moment was too crucial not to.

He slowly stood to his full length then, and took a few steps backwards. His eyes were concentrated on her still—her face this time. But his gaze was...sad?

In both horror and relief, she sobbed as he slit his own throat.

The cut is neat but short and his eyes were wide with shock as the kunai just knicks his jugular, as if jolted by a newfound consciousness of pain. His knees banged onto the floor, kunai slipping out of his hold, meeting the ground with a Clang!

His blood spewed out in torrents and it amplified Sakura's nausea tenfold. He fell backwards, thrashing, a gargling sound escaping as he tried to grasp at his own neck. The blood pooled beneath him, a Sharingan crimson seeping into the wood and creeping towards her feet. She used what little energy she had to shift her trembling legs closer to her, away from the wreckage of red.

Neji bursts through the door then. And not a moment later his feet were glued in position. His Byakugan swam with an unreserved disturbance as his eyes drank in his teammate—naked and bloody—as well as the dying man on the floor, clutching at his throat as it spurted a fountain, his pants pulled down just enough to reveal a slightly bloody and rapidly softening phallus.

They both watched her perpetrator flail, solid minutes passing before he gasped out his last breath, body slumping rigid.

It was only then that the window opened, a forceful snap of the locks breaking before Ino crawled through. She was a deathly pale, left shoulder adorning splatters of blood.

She said nothing, looked at neither Neji nor the dead man on the floor, only at Sakura. She wasted no time, and her lack of confusion distantly confirmed to Sakura that she was the one who killed her attacker.

Then Sakura was being wrapped in a thin bedsheet with the utmost care. She was silent except for restrained gasps between uneven breaths; her sobs having quieted to whimpers since Neji's arrival. She looked around with unfocused eyes, trying to forget the pain swallowing her whole because they're on a mission and some part of her still knew that.

Ino cupped her wet cheek and looked at her sternly, forcing her to meet her gaze. "Sakura," her voice was grim.

And Sakura still couldn't feel her face but she saw a vibrant glowing in her peripheral and distantly recognizes she was being healed.

"You're going to be okay. Do you understand?"

Sakura trembled more than she nodded.

"Good. We completed the mission and we're going back to Konoha." Ino wasn't the assigned leader to be calling those kinds of shots, but that didn't make a difference right now. "We're going to fix you up a bit and get Shino. Then we're going to need to run back to Konoha. Can you do that for me?"

Sakura meekly nodded.

Neji had returned to his usual aloof composure by then. He huffed. "We weren't supposed to get rid of all of them, we needed at least one alive."

Ino shot Neji the darkest sneer anyone probably had the courage to wield in the face of the Hyuga. "It doesn't matter, they're all dead now and there's nothing we can do about it. So let's just fucking go."

And Neji didn't have a response, so they did exactly that. Shino, as predicted, said nothing to seeing Sakura clad in nothing but a torn piece of bed sheet and spare shorts Ino had. Nor did he comment on the dullness in her eyes.


The team debriefed the mission to one of Tsunade's subordinates and Sakura attended the required check in at the hospital, if only to promptly have the small dose of poison removed. She headed straight to her house after, slipping in through her window for discretion, only to find herself surging with relief when she realized no one was home.

Then she ran to the bathroom and violently retched.

Sakura spent hours in the shower, scorching her skin with hot water and scrubbing it raw. She tried to scrub the feeling of his tongue on her neck off and his hands on her breasts. She tried to scrub off Sasuke's starry eyes cackling at her misfortune. She tried to scrub off the onus of Naruto's conviction. She tried to scrub off her fixed post as the dead weight of what once was Team 7.

She sobbed. Her knees crashed onto the porcelain and she screamed. Then she scrubbed again.

Neji never gave her any particular attention before, but he avoided her for weeks after that. When she did see him, she would notice him eye her with an uncharacteristic sympathy. Then she started to avoid him too.

She didn't say a word in defense or question when she was told she would be barred from missions for the next month. Despite the suspension, Tsunade didn't treat her differently. But there was a heavy guilt in her eyes that Sakura wanted no part of.

Naruto pestered her incessantly. You've been acting really weird Sakura-chan. Why isn't Baa-chan letting you come on my mission with me? You've been saying you're busy every day this week, Sakura-chan, c'mon, if something's wrong, just tell me so we can fix it already!

Eventually, she snapped, "Just leave me the fuck alone, Naruto! You wouldn't get it and there's nothing you can do! So just fucking drop it!"

Naruto did finally stop asking after that. But not before shattering her with a single retort: "You're starting to sound like Sasuke."


When Ino dragged her into her room a week after the incident, Sakura had wanted to protest but couldn't find the courage to. "Forehead, I need to talk to you about something."

"I don't want to talk," Sakura's response was automated, but the defeat in her tone conveyed she meant it. Still, she sat down on the lavender sheets of Ino's bed when she was pulled into the privacy of her room.

Ino had scowled. "Well, I do." Sakura had met her friend's fiery look with a bold knit of her brows and a grimace of her lips. But she felt her resolve shake when Ino's expression thread into the deepest melancholy. Sakura wondered if Ino had to forcefully strip away her anger or if the sight of her these days was just that dismal.

"Sakura, what happened to you..." Ino tensed, looked away, lips twisting into a sure sign of a resonating distraught. Sakura could see her searching for the words amidst the miasma.

Then Ino's eyes slid shut, nose crinkling, hands firmly fisting the sheets. Her head bowed, like she was offering it to a guillotine while hiding her chagrin behind her hair.

It was too heavy for Sakura, and part of her wanted to dart out the room. But a much more desperate part wanted to reach out and hold her.

"Sakura, I was so mad," Ino finally spoke. "That shouldn't have happened. Not on my watch." She let out a strangled sound, then paced out a few breaths. "I was so damn mad. When I was in his body, I knew how risky it was. If Shikamaru knew about it, he would have told me a million better ways to go about it. But Sakura, I was in his head—I felt it, and...I had to slit that piece of shit's throat." She seethed through grit teeth. "I knew it would have killed me too if I didn't get back quick enough, but I had to kill him." Ino said, cheeks burning, like she'd been freshly spaded with the experience.

Sakura could feel her heart twisting, pounding like an erratic war drum. She traced Ino's teeth, digging into her bottom lip. It didn't quite bleed, but Sakura could see a thin layer start to peel between a chapped crack.

"And I was mad because I knew, Sakura, I knew...because..." Then Ino's voice cracked,"because it happened to me too."

Sakura felt a wet line slip down her cheek, her head swimming. She surprised herself with the raspy texture of her own voice. "...What?" Gods. Ino. There's was a lapse, where she shuddered, swallowed hard, trying to reclaim her voice. "...When?"

Ino breath hitches, "Like…a m-month ago." She cried openly. "In Ame. I th-thought I was going to die." She wheezed. "Sometimes I still wished I had."

Sakura eyes slipped shut, if only to acknowledge the wound for what it was. This was not an experience meant to be shared. Yet, here they were. And Ino just cried harder.

"He-he wasn't my first like—I know...with you, I know it...but..."

"Ino..." Sakura's voice is so small, whining. "Oh, Ino, no…"

"Sakura, I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Ino said. "And of all the people I know, you are the last-I-I would have never, never wanted that to happen to you. But it did, and it's all m-my fault." Sakura's shaking her head in a vehement objection. But Ino doesn't let her speak. "I knew!" She whimpered, with eyes so blue and sad, perfectly synchronized with the regret in her voice. "I knew you were messed up after everything with Sasuke, and I should've been there! I knew what could've happened! I should've protected you!"

"Oh, Ino."

And Sakura doesn't know who grabbed who first, but then their arms are tight around one another, like they were trying to suffocate the grief with the strength of their embrace. Ino spoke, her voice muffled by the shoulder she gasped into, "I'm so sorry, Sakura. I'm sorry for everything. Please!" Her voice cracks, loud and shrill on Sakura's aching ears. "Please forgive me."

Sakura pulled back, her brows furrowed and her smile shaking. She cupped Ino's moist cheek with her hand, and her smile molded into something more firm.

Her best friend had never been as beautiful as she was in that moment.

Sakura kissed Ino's mouth, her cheek, her forehead, and pulled her back into that tenuous embrace. "Always Ino. We're going to get through this," she promised. "We're going to do it together."

Their tops were coated with their tears, and the sensation was painful and cleansing at once. Ino adjusted her arms, held Sakura more securely. They were both smiling now, a crippled and worn smile, but a smile nonetheless.

"Okay."