Disclaimer: Obviously, Naruto is mine, but Masashi Kishimoto stole it from me in a super cool, Hollywood-worthy-esque heist. Damn that sneaky bastard.
A/N: Sequel-ish to the spaces in between.
Giftfic for empathapathique, because she is so awesome that if you check the thesaurus for 'awesome', those words aren't enough. (Plus, we're totally eloping together.)
There is a war waging on. There are sides that must be (have been) taken, and soldiers that will be (must be) killed. She knows this, just like she knows they must not lose, and just like she knows that she, and everyone she loves, will die fighting. She is a soldier, even if she has not seen the battlefield. (but really, she thinks, medics see more blood, and her hands are as bloody as the dead soldier she tries to save)
There are casualties in war, she knows, and there are prisoners too. They bring a girl into the USS Sharingan's Medical Bay one day, a girl she estimates to be barely older than herself. (maybe, she thinks, it would've been better if she had died on the battlefield) This girl is badly wounded, broken and torn and red like her blood and the girl's own hair. The Marines who drag her in inform her that she is Oto's Lieutenant Karin, their top intelligence officer, and that they need her in good enough shape to be interrogated. (Sakura remembers them telling her something like that once before, and then there had been a gun and cracks and darkness) She nods, because she is a Medical Officer, and that is her job, and she will save what lives she can regardless of where they come from, regardless of what she knows will happen to them after she saves them. (she is not saving this girl's life, she muses, she is merely prolonging her death) She calls for supplies from a nurse, and injects and staunches and sews this girl whole. (for now, she thinks, she is whole only for now)
She informs the Marine guards from the Interrogation unit that she will need five days for the girl to have recovered enough. In three days, she tells them, the girl will be conscious and they can talk to her, but they cannot interrogate her until after day five. She sits in a chair next to the girl's cot and watches the rise, fall, rise, fall of her breathing and wonders if she knows her breaths are numbered. It has been seven hours since this Lieutenant Karin was brought in, and it is four minutes to midnight.
Later, she eats dinner in the mess hall with Captain Uchiha. (Sasuke, he asks her to call him, but she cannot help but feel that the two are very different people) She talks of everything and nothing, of how Lieutenant Juugo's psychiatric sessions are going well, of how she has misplaced her favourite stethoscope, of how the holo-projector in her office is malfunctioning. When they first began (and no, not the hurried clandestine trysts in storage rooms, but when he sat down next to her in the mess hall three months ago, and everyone saw that) she always wondered if her talking bothered him, and she asked him. I like listening to you, he tells her. (she hears the unspoken message: it reminds him of voices long dead from a family he no longer has, and it makes him feel less lonely) So she talks, even when she has nothing to say, but the words are not empty.
It is day three, and the girl is awake. (she doesn't know why she doesn't call her by her name, but she supposes that it makes it easier not to think about what happens after) The girl is drowsy and groggy, and Sakura orders the Marine guards out of sight so as not to alarm her. Karin comes to slowly, eyelids fluttering and eyes hesitantly focusing, and Sakura is shocked by the vitriol she sees directed towards her. She pats Karin's hand, and tells her that her recovery is going well, and that she will be fine soon. (they are lies, Sakura knows, but she hates pain, and so she will take what she can away) She leaves shortly after.
When she approaches Sasuke in the Command Centre later in the evening, she sees Lieutenants Juugo and Suigetsu around him, and the severe expression on their faces bely some critical matter that they are discussing. Sasuke has not yet spotted her, and their conversation continues until Suigetsu glimpses her and bounds over to greet her with a boisterous hug. (and if it is a little forced, she does not comment, because they all have their ghosts to deal with) Her view of Sasuke is blocked by Suigetsu, but the air around them thickens with his disapproval, and it is not before long that she is tugged out of his grip to Sasuke's side. It is not until they are both back in Sasuke's Captain's quarters that the tension she feels around his shoulders lessens, and she wonders why it was there in the first place.
She checks on the girl again the next day, and Karin is now fully conscious. Sakura enters the curtained-off section of the Medical Bay with her clipboard and a mug of tea, and offers the mug to the girl, inquiring after her health, and is she feeling better now? (she looks into Karin's eyes and knows that no, no, this girl has some parts damaged beyond the repair of any doctor or time, and so she will never be better) The mug of hot tea is knocked from her hand, and she gasps when it shatters and spills and scalds her body and cuts her foot, and the Marine guards charge in and restrain the girl and help Sakura out, but not before –
You, the girl spits out, you're the one he couldn't forget.
She wraps her foot in gauze and rubs cream into her burns, and wonders why the pain in her heart is greater than both combined. (she has questions, she knows, but she is afraid of the answers)
Sasuke is informed of the attack, and it is the first time she sees him furious. She has seen him irritated, angry, and piqued, but the full force of his arctic fury has remained a stranger to her until now. She sees the Marine guards approach him from across the Command Centre, and watches as his eyes harden and his jaw clenches. (later, she will add that the lights from the holo-screen next to him bathe his eyes in red, and he looks like an avenging angel, or a person too haunted)
When he makes loves to her that night, it is slow and soft and careful, like he is afraid she will shatter and break and fall apart beneath his callous-roughened hands. He presses kisses to her bandaged foot, and traces light fingers over her scalded skin, and she wonders why her heart fractures a little at that. (his touch is almost like an apology, but he will not tell her what he is sorry for)
She leaves the Medical Bay to look for Suigetsu the next day, in the lulls between attacks and skirmishes. (this, she thinks, feels like a battle on its own) He takes in her gauze-wrapped foot and pink-puckered skin, and his eyes are soft and faintly guilty on hers. Tell me, she demands. I need to know. There is a long moment, and the question rests like broken-hard diamond chips and shattered shards of ageing mirrors between them, tangible and real and not-quite-visible. He shakes his head slowly, regretfully.
It is not my place, he tells her, and the words are little comfort. But if, he continues, and there is a sad hardness to his gaze, if I were you, I would go to the Brig now. He pauses, and his smile is brittle-bitter. Who knows what you might find?
If her pace is almost a jog, she will tell herself that it is not uncertainty and dread that propels her towards the Brig. The ship's hallways are crowded and dense as it nears lunch, and her progress is slow. (like wading through a dream, she compares, and prays this is not a nightmare) Her steps are hesitant as she nears the deserted holding sector. There are shadows and phantoms in the corners here, ghosts lurking in her periphery. The world, she finds, is quiet here.
A smattering of guards patrol the hallways, and several of them nod as they pass her. (like greetings, she will think, in storybooks and fairytales. hello, fellow murderer, how are you today?) Interrogation Room 3 is occupied, the tiny blinking lights at the doorframe like fireflies or forgotten souls.
She presses her palm to the scanner, and it grants her entry. The doors slide open soundlessly, and she tentatively steps into the viewing room, like Gretel entering a gingerbread house, or a lamb walking into a lion's den.
Sasuke sits opposite the girl (Karin, she tells herself, her name is Karin. names have power, and she will try to use it wisely, like she tries to remember all those she couldn't save) at a bolted-down table, and his back is kept to the one-way mirror. Karin, she notes, is battered and bruised and bloody and so much more broken, and her heart cries out for this sad, sad girl.
Their voices are clear through the speaker that broadcasts their conversation to the viewing room, and his tone is acerbic and cutting and harsh. Hers is biting and angry and hurt, and Sakura wonders why there are so many secrets between all of them.
Sakura, Karin hisses. Your precious little golden girl. Tell me, Sasuke, is she really that good a fuck? Does she know everything you did in his service? Do you think she'll still let you touch her once she finds out?
Karin looks up, and her eyes are searing through the mirror, and she smiles. It sends chills down Sakura's spine.
She's here, you know. Your little cherry blossom. Right behind the glass. What now, Sasuke-kun? What will you do?
Sakura flees, and doesn't look back. There is the sound of pounding feet behind her, and she stops running when she escapes into the maintenance sector. She is not surprised when he catches up with her.
You ran, he begins, and she relaxes in small degrees into his embrace. She turns her face into his chest, and nods slowly, almost unsure. Why? He is hesitant, like he is afraid of her answer, like he is afraid that she will break him. I don't know, she replies, and he presses a fleeting kiss to the side of her head.
I'm sorry, she adds, and doesn't really know what she apologises for. Reams and tomes and libraries of words unsaid hang between them in defiant suspension, but they are too tired now, too fractured and weary, so they will take this slowly. They have time, and they are too fragile and paradoxical and incomplete to carry anything lighter than the weight of the world on their shoulders.
No, he sighs, and it ghosts over her hair and the nape of her neck. I am.
They open the first book.