Sakura drinks, she bangs down shots and sips at delicate wines because it feels nice to die a little on the outside when she's already so dead inside. Naruto is gone, she gulps down another shot after raising it to him. Gone to a beautiful girl who's smile isn't so broken and isn't so... She downs another. This is what it's about: forgetting. Forgetting a war that took everything, a childhood spent in fear, and picking up the pieces (but they're so small, they cut so deep and she's crying because it hurts so damn much and she's still trying to know it all but the books have failed and she doesn't want to know any more).
When she isn't home (drinking and forgetting) she is experimenting. Because being second only to Shikamaru for the most brilliant in her year, she must excel as no other because that is Haruno Sakura and it's all she has left. So, she works until she is numb with fatigue (when the lines smear like a child's watercolor painting, so damn flawed and so damn beautiful that it's okay to cry and she's okay). She flirts with death, serves up a side dish of burnt bodies, and entices him with a dish of soft dreams and hard realities. She knows death (has dissected it and lost herself to it, clawed her way back up the summit of sanity with manicured nails, blood and grit hiding in the grooves).
Ino taught her to be pretty (hiding knives in flower baskets, beautifully curled hair held up with bloody needles, wearing plunging necklines so the target will lose himself as the knife plunges in). Ino-chan is dead. Sakura tosses her head back and smiles at the creeping burn. Ino was too pretty, too damn pretty. Her funeral is completed by a drinking binge, the silver circuit that Ino, the flower princess, always wore. Sakura drinks and cries and shakes and laughs because Ino never taught her how to be the inside kind of pretty (the outside kind of pretty can't be seen at night).
When he is captured, she is his medic, the irony is too rich to ignore, "Funny, eh? You needing a medic? Karma really is a bitch, huh?" Chuckling at odds and probability stacking, she moves, careful to keep the balance. He doesn't talk much, just watches, always looking, always staring. She takes his glasses and tucks them in her pocket, it feels good to be in control.
"You know, you didn't take him." She sits across, leaning forward on crossed legs. Tapping her chin she waits, (waits for mountains to move, history to undue itself, and things like justice and truth to matter).
"No, he took himself, didn't he?" He speaks, voice raspy from disuse and clipped with malice.
"That's right, he did. Took himself and the rest of us, you think he knew that?" She barks, voice filled with bittersweet laughter. "Bastard probably knew but didn't care." Shaking her head she stands, patting at pockets and fiddling with pens. "He's dead, went and fucked up." Watching out of the corner of her eye she notes the subtleties. The slight creasing of his eyes, the clenching of his mouth, and the way his eyes harden.
"How?" He's fishing for information, one of his escape plans out the window and he's looking at a locked door.
"Naruto wasn't here." She falls silent, eyes jaded green and hair falling to shield herself, it's the only protection she never lost, the only barrier from the reality she was never meant to bear. "Naruto wasn't here and Tsunade wasn't here...but he was."
She shuffles about, content to lose herself to her work. Insert needle into crook of arm, fish for vein, take blood to test for information hidden in cells with no allegiance. She whisperers it, Sakura blossoms drifting down and falling to their beautiful demise, "I was here. I was here and he was here."
"You killed him?" His tone is formal and even but she can hear the doubt, (she's hears it every night, whispered from a snake's hiss and a raven's crow, had it imprinted on her soul with ink that does not fade and does not leave).
Slamming her fist down onto the cabinet she moves, delicate fingers encircle his neck and remain there, (choking the death out of him). "No. I did not kill him." Her voice hollow and rigid. "He wouldn't even let me have that." Releasing her hold on him she exits the room. Later, another nurse comes and removes the needle, careful not to look nor comment on his bruised neck nor the strewn cabinet pieces.
It is weeks before she returns, weeks spent contemplating the implications of Sasuke's death, nothing good can come of it. There is one less person who would be helpful to him if he manages to escape, one less person to utilize. When she does return, she reeks of alcohol. Wrinkling his nose in disgust he watches as she strides in with difficulty.
"You..." She slurs, pointing one long finger at him before shaking it, dieing fish giving one more spasm. The bottle of sake in her other hand does not go unnoticed. "You knew Sasuke." She falls into the chair, gently placing the bottle by her side, a feat in her condition, he notes idly.
Nodding once he waits to see where this is going.
"When did he die?" She tilts her head to the side, childlike and atrociously simple (she never grew up, shattered into pieces and glued back together in the semblance of a woman).
"You would know." He doesn't understand, she can see it in his eyes. He never truly knew Sasuke, not the way she did. Not the way a would be lover that was never good enough did. She understands Sasuke like a dieing man understands water, knowing and needing every drop.
"Why did you do what you did?" She asks, hanging off the silence that clouds her lungs and chokes her. Somehow, she needs to know.
Raising his head, he stares at her, boring into her hazy eyes and fogged mind, "I did what was necessary for Orochimaru-sama."
She smiles then. It is such a simple thing, so contrary to all that is said and left unsaid that he can't help but look closer for something, for whatever makes this woman so strikingly different."You and me," she croons, picking up her sake and offering it to him. "We're so similar, it scares me."
Arching an eyebrow he waits for her to explain as he shakes his head no to the sake.
"I've been chasing after Sasuke for so long, I became that. I am that. I just... I realized that, just now. Damn. Bastard always was selfish, couldn't let me have anything. I fought him, you know? I stabbed him, right in the fucking heart. I wanted him to feel, if only for a second, what I've felt for years, fucking years! He took it from me, took the only passion I had. He took himself. Slit his god-damn throat. Guess he couldn't handle being beat by me. Fuck, I was lucky he was fighting at half strength to begin with. He killed Itachi, he accomplished his dream and he stole mine. Bastard got everything." She's crying, it's silent and barely there. No sniffling, no sobs, no pathetic wobble to her voice. Just tiny testaments forcing their way out.
"You and me, we're the same, see. We don't have anything of our own. That's why we're medics. We're support, we're not the important ones, we just keep 'em alive. Naruto doesn't need me... no, I need Naruto. He's got tons of people that would die for him. I don't even have someone willing to live for me. Fuck, we're parasites, aren't we? You're just a part of Orochimaru and I was a part of Sasuke."
He stares, long and hard. Memorizing every line and shadow that she holds and tries not to think of it. Tries not to consider her words. Tries to discredit them by attributing it to the sake but somewhere he knows. Knows that she knows too much and that she is the only one who understands enough to know.
"It hurts, it hurts so much." She grasps at her chest, just above her heart, as if she can stop the spreading pain.
"Stop it." It is quiet, a viper's hiss. "You are pathetic." He bores into her eyes, kills her over and over again in his mind, smears the blood and carnage along the walls as he smiles.
"It drives you crazy." She speaks, incredulous. "It kills you that you weren't useful. That you couldn't fix his arms. That you weren't good enough." She rises, posture lank and eyes smoldering with pitying understanding. He does not move, does not speak, yet she knows. Can feel him snap. Can feel the weeks of isolation and malnutrition catching up. She and he, she can feel it, a part of herself (she feels it every night, clutching and blankets and biting lips to keep the words from falling out).
"No one is coming to get you, are they?" Sakura laughs, because seeing her life played out in the guise of another is just so heartbreaking she can't help but. "Orochimaru couldn't be bothered with you, you aren't of any more use, are you?" Turning his head away she can feel him crumbling. Behind the carefully schooled exterior he is there, recoiling and contemplating all that she has said. Checking the truth of her words against the once cool and logical facts he possesses but reason has failed and hurt has triumphed.
As she says the things, she can recall a time when it was spoken to her, when she didn't have the restraint not to cry and feel every sharp word as clearly as any knife wound. She can remember her love to end all loves saying it, repeating it in a sick mantra of disgust and belittlement. She can remember loving him through it all, she can remember because she can feel it even now; a steady pulse at the edge of memory with nothing truly substantial to solidify its existence, merely a quiet thank you on that faithful night.
Taking another sip from her sake bottle she presses, "He's got bigger fish to fry, doesn't he? Another body to find, perhaps?" When he looks up she gapes. She's seen those eyes before, never behind the glasses and never on a man's face but on her own. The tortuous almost bestial gaze of someone who's given up sanity in favor of oblivion.
"Where is he?" No answer.
"We can kill him." Something stirs behind his eyes and she holds her breathe.
"How stupid do you think I am?" His voice is hollow and mocking.
A slow smile spreads, pathetic and crooked but there, "we're the same. Maybe, maybe..." Taking a deep breathe to even the wobble out of her tone she continues.
"Maybe, if you kill Orichimaru, maybe I can be okay. Maybe that's enough. To see and help do what I couldn't do. Maybe it'll stop..." Placing her hand over her heart she trails off, staring off at intangible things.
It is perfect silence as minutes turn to a half hour that melts into an hour. Suddenly, a knock sounds at the door followed by two quick and three regular knocks. Smiling prettily Sakura stands up and walks gracefully to the sink, dumping out the water and placing the sake glass on the counter. Arching an eyebrow at the strange action Kabuto waits to see what will come.
"We're going to go our own separate ways now, Kabuto-san." Her voice is light and airy. Something clicks in his mind.
"You aren't drunk." His voice is as monotone as ever but there is accusation hiding in the words.
"Not tonight, no." It is the first domino, it all falls into place in his feverish mind.
"Ah, I see." She was lying, the entire time; all those crocodile tears and fake emotions.
"No, you don't." Her smile is soft as she reaches out and gently runs her thumb over his cheek. "But then, I don't want you to." Narrowing his eyes at the unwanted contact he waits for her to give more away, anything that he can use.
"We're so alike." It comes as no surprise to him when he feels a needle slide under his skin, administering a lethal dose.
"He came for you, he's here now fighting Tsunade-sama. I guess we aren't completely alike after all." He can feel his senses slip, the world fading to black and her thumb calming moving up and down lose it's poignancy to become static.
"S-Sasuke-sama didn't love you." It's the most he can do, the most crushing blow he can deliver with his failing mind and tongue that feels thick and overly large.
His words do nothing, no quickening pulse, no marginal widening of the eyes, no shock. Giving a little chuckle Sakura smiles.
"And Orochimaru doesn't love you." It does nothing. Giving the corpse a gentle pat on the cheek she strides out, maybe by killing him (herself) and his (her) love she can be whole again, she doesn't hold her breathe though.
-
This fic took a life of its own. I let it go where it wanted and I'm not sure that it's completely clear. Sakura only lied about helping him kill Orochimaru and being drunk. Interpret the rest of it as you will, in fact interpret her lying however you will. This story is meant to be vague and be harsh in a roundabout way. -Cloey Marie-