Sakura waited patiently for Kabuto's return. She knew he'd assume she was helpless, but she had plans for him. He hadn't even bothered to tie her up, just threw her in a room that smelled of stale boxes and old rat droppings. So he thought he could throw a few jutsus at her, drain her chakra, and throw her in a storage room?
I'll rip his eyes out! She thought. It would be a fitting punishment. She didn't know what his plans for her were, but she had some very specific ideas about which body parts she'd cut off first.
Or bite off, she thought. The bastard had the sense to take her weapons and strip her, but that wouldn't stop her from killing him if she had the chance. When he'd pulled off her clothes she'd assumed he'd rape her, but he just left her on the cold concrete. He could probably only get it up for Orochimaru. Stripping her was easier than searching for hidden weapons.
Sakura lay still, hoping when he came back he'd think she was unconscious from her wounds. Even blinded from his jutsu and deaf from burst eardrums she felt the draft as the door opened. She tried to psyche herself up. She knew she was the underdog here, but she'd be dammed if she'd go down without inflicting some more damage. She'd hit him twice. She might even manage to kill him with luck.
She tried to feel the vibrations of his footsteps through the floor, but it didn't work. She wouldn't know he was near until he touched her. It was risky, but it was the only chance she had.
She felt a hand turn her head, and she struck, hoping she was aiming for his head. She felt how slow and clumsy her movements were, even as her fist felt hair brush by.
I almost got him, she thought with a sense of despair. She knew she wouldn't get a second chance.
Rough hands held her shoulders to the ground. She tried to kick him in the genitals, but he locked his legs over hers, pinning her effectively. He held her there, and she wondered if he was going to rape her after all. She'd been wounded on missions, tortured briefly once, and lost in the mountains until she ate her pack animal. She'd never faced such a thing as rape.
I won't cry. He won't make me scream, she decided. If he wanted her body, he wouldn't have the satisfaction of seeing her weaken.
He took her wrist, and she struggled again. He pushed her back to the floor and held her until she stopped fighting. Several more times he tried to take her wrist, and she fought him until she felt too weak to struggle any more.
Sakura let him take her wrist, and he lifted her hand and placed her fingers on a ninja headband. She felt along the symbol, realizing she was touching a Konoha leaf.
They came for me, she thought. She hadn't even considered being rescued. Kabuto had been weakened in her attack, but she'd been alone. Another ninja must have been on a mission in the area.
He pulled her hand down, and she felt skin and the rough ridge of a scar. She ran her finger down the scar, feeling a closed eyelid with the scar running through it and down his cheek.
Oh thank god. It's Kakashi. It would have been amazing just to be found, but to have someone she trusted here was more than she could have hoped for. She couldn't hold back the tears now, even though they shamed her. He moved his hands from her shoulders, and after she didn't fight him he pulled his legs away, leaving her free to move.
He turned her head gently, and she felt a wet cloth wipe the blood away from her ear. It won't do any good, she thought. He couldn't fix busted eardrums. She didn't know what Kabuto had done to her eyes, but her ears were definitely out of commission, permanently unless she could get surgery.
Kakashi lifted her, carrying her to another room. He sat her against a wall, and Sakura felt tile under her. She smelled soap and felt a sudden burst of humidity, so she wasn't surprised when he put her hand into a tub of warm water.
It was the best bath she'd ever taken, and she relaxed in the water until she felt a draft of cold air when he returned and opened the door. She felt embarrassed, but he'd already seen her nude, so she put it behind her.
Kakashi handed her a towel and a change of clothes. She recognized men's boxers and the uniform of a sound ninja. It was probably all he could find. After she'd dressed he led her to what felt like a medical bed.
She wanted to sleep more than anything, but he was turning her head again, touching her face. She felt a cold and soothing balm over her raw eyes. He bandaged her eyes, squeezed her hand, and left her to sleep.
He woke her to give her a bowl of tasteless food. He was always a shitty cook, she thought, but she was so glad to have him there she didn't care.
When he left she was stuck in her own world, sleeping or wandering carefully to the bathroom. When he returned he would squeeze her hand and replace her bandages, or give her food.
She knew days went by, perhaps months, but she had no way to measure time. She knew they couldn't go home until the spring thaw.
She pictured the snow in Konoha, falling with that soft swishing sound of the first storm. It was never cold long enough for the snow to stick, and it usually just ended up in an ugly gray slush, but she loved that first snowfall.
Cocoa, poker games with Naruto and Hinata, shopping with Ino – she missed them all. When the tears came this time there was no one to hold her hand, no friend to comfort her.
Will it be this way forever? She wondered. Tsunade might be able to return her hearing, if she was lucky. She might be stuck in this empty world forever, never a ninja, never having a family of her own.
Later, that night she guessed, she felt Kakashi remove the bandages. Her eyes shouldn't have still needed bandages. Kabuto hadn't removed her eyes physically, just blinded her with a jutsu.
She felt his warm hands cover her eyes, and a small burst of chakra tingled along her face. It held for a moment, and then faded into spurts and weak jolts.
Is he really trying to use healing chakra? she wondered. He didn't have the chakra control. Not many ninjas did. That explained how he'd been using his time. He must have found Kabuto's books.
He's a genius, she thought, but I don't think even genius can do this.
His visits had the new element of attempted healings now. The time dragged by slowly, and she began to write a novel in her head. She didn't plan to ever write it down, but she wrote a beautiful story where Sasuke never left the village, and he and Naruto teamed up with her to become the New Sanins, a group of ninjas who made Konoha the strongest ninja village in the world.
She knew it was a silly idea, but it made her happy. In her fantasy her father never died fighting the Kyuubi, and she gave Kakashi a wife and children. She didn't have the tension with Ino that she faced in her real life, and they were like sisters.
It filled her time, and she wondered if she should write it down after all. Jiraiya and Kakashi might like reading it, even though she wouldn't have any erotica in it.
The only other way she found to use her time was to feel her way around the room, leaving after a while and wandering the hallway. She was careful not to lose her way, but one day she tried to return to her room, only to find that a door was where she could have sworn a hallway should have been.
She couldn't find her way back, and the wall changed texture under her hands. Instead of cold stone she was feeling hard-packed dirt.
I'm in a tunnel, she thought. I'm going to die here.
Kakashi found her eventually, still feeling her way along a tunnel under Kabuto's complex. When he took her wrist she felt for the scar bisecting his eye. She didn't cry this time, but she let him pull her into his arms and hold her. His warm tears leaked through her hair onto her cheek.
I didn't even think about what this might be like for him. She let him lead her back to the room, and she didn't try to leave again for several days. Eventually she had to do something to keep herself sane. She was more careful, but she still had to wander.
Kakashi slowly became better at using medical chakra, but he'd never make a medic-nin. If she could have talked to him she could have shown him how to measure his chakra out slowly, spreading it over the wound and letting it seep through the skin. He was using his chakra like most ninjas did, in sudden bursts that worked well for jutsus but were shit for medical uses.
As the days went by (or weeks, or months) she felt his chakra even out. He was still using it incorrectly though. He was holding the jutsu long enough, but he was putting too much chakra into it. Instead of rearranging the cells of the wound, it was merely passing through them, moving on through her head and into the bed.
Still, she couldn't believe he'd made it this far. She'd never known another ninja that wasn't a natural with medical chakra to work at healing for this long.
I'm lucky to have a friend like him, she thought. She wondered if her father would have been like this. She wished she could have known.
One day she felt a change in his chakra, and she knew he was finally getting the hang of the healing jutsu. He had managed the right amount of power, and she felt it as a soothing presence in her eyes, like a cream on a burn.
When he removed his hands she saw a gray haze. She could just make out movement, although it was just a darker splotch of gray.
She hadn't needed a bandage in what seemed like years, but she didn't try to stop him from covering her eyes against the light.
She felt so impatient now. She craved the light, and she couldn't think about her novel any more. She wanted to see Kakashi's face, to run through the trees and drink from a brook.
The next healing did nothing. Sakura was extremely disappointed. He had obviously been lucky.
She still didn't have any way to measure time, but when he suddenly stopped trying to heal her she felt more depressed than before.
He gave up, she thought. He continued to bring her food and hold her hand occasionally, but he didn't try to heal her again. She knew it was only a matter of time before he could take her back to Konoha. He must have made the logical decision to wait until skilled ninjas could help her.
One day Kakashi finally put his hands over her eyes and let his chakra flow into them. The soothing chakra poured through her, perfectly realigning her cells.
He was practicing, she thought, and she felt bad for ever doubting him.
When he removed his hands she could see his face, fuzzy but visible. He smiled and said something, but she couldn't hear. She didn't care. Seeing was enough for the moment.
The Sharingan was leaking again, or at least that was the excuse he'd always used when his more emotional friend's eye began to cry. He took a pad of paper and pencil and wrote, "Do your eyes hurt? I'm not sure if I did the jutsu completely."
"They're fine," she wrote. "How did you learn a medical jutsu?"
"Kabuto's books. I couldn't perform it the proper way, so I used the Sharingan to guide the chakra. I've been practicing on his lab animals."
"How long have we been here?" she wrote.
"Almost two months," he wrote.
"I thought we'd been here for at least half a year."
"We should be able to leave in a month or so. Until then you might want to look at Kabuto's books. We should take some of them back to Konoha with us. I'll show you his library."
"Thank you for this," she wrote. "No one's ever accomplished what you have."
He kissed her chastely on the forehead and took her to Kabuto's library.
The library was a large room carved into the rock. Hundreds of books filled the shelves, but what really caught her attention were the evidences of Kakashi's presence. A cot sat in the corner, surrounded by books. Some were open and marked; some were sitting in stacks on the floor. Dirty bowls sat abandoned near the cot. She knew he was fastidiously clean. He must have sat there for days at a time, doing nothing but studying to help her.
Warmth filled her for her old friend. Her feeling probably showed on her face, because he ruffled her head like he might a small child or a puppy.
She went through the books. Most of them were medical texts available in Konoha, along with some imaginative porn which Kakashi found fascinating but were useless to her. About five of the books were worth carrying back. She hesitated about the one dealing in Necromancy, but she decided she'd rather know it was locked up in Konoha than sitting here waiting to be found by looters.
He wanted to try to heal her ears, but she knew surgery was necessary. It was much easier to wait now, reading Kabuto's books while Kakashi disappeared with his porn. She saw him slip the erotic books into his pack before they left. Instead of irritating her like it would have before, his odd habit made her feel close to him. It was something uniquely his, and she was just glad to have such a good friend.
When they reached Konoha the first place she stopped was at her mother's house. Her mother had always been afraid when she went on missions. She'd never said anything, but when Sakura returned from long missions she often saw her mother with dark bags under her eyes and evidence that she hadn't rested.
Kakashi ruffled her hair again as he left her. She patted it back in place with a small amount of irritation, but his grin disarmed her. She watched him walk away, his new favorite book already in his hand. She might have lost her father, but she had someone almost as good.