Scars
Chapter 2
The-Clinically-Insane
"Ohayo Sakura-chan. What are you up to today?"
Sakura sighed and glanced up from her clipboard. "I have about a dozen medicals to do. And one of them is Kakashi's. I can't even figure out why he's here after all this time. He really pisses me off sometimes." She slid gracefully form a counter top in the crowded dining room of the mansion, narrowly avoiding being pushed back into it by a fifteen year old boy. ANBU members were dangerous during breakfast, and she was small, so she normally kept out of their way…
Although there was one time when she had woken up early and came into the kitchen during rush hour without realizing the mortal danger she had just put herself in. About a dozen ANBU about to go on the dawn patrol and the guards just coming in from the night shift were eating breakfast, and she was almost trampled when they realized that she was cooking real eggs and bacon (for herself, of course), and not instant ramen or rice. Genma had saved her, but her breakfast had been lost.
"How long has it been since you last saw him?" Tenten asked, moving closer to lift herself up onto a table away from the men while Sakura leaned on the wall beside her, both watching with amusement as two guys fought over the last piece of toast. The sadest part was that it was burnt. Or had been burnt, until someone dropped it in chocolate milk. "I thought he left the village when he heard about, oh, uh… Sasuke and Naruto."
Sakura smiled at her weak attempt to avoid the actual subject. She knew everyone walked on a sheet of glass around her, at least when it came to her old teammates, and this was years later.
"He did. I haven't seen him in… I think about four years… before everything happened. I went on a mission with him for a week. Haven't talked or talked to him since, not even about them. I think he was scared of what I would be like." She took on a preoccupied, glazed look. Kami only knew what she was thinking.
"You know," She started optimistically. "I was really upset and I suppose he couldn't deal with what happened either. Sasuke and Naruto were like his sons, they were very close… well, I mean… oh, never mind. They were all Kakashi had, in any case."
"So you're excusing him for leaving you all alone?" Tenten asked in an astonished voice. She had subconsciously leaned forward, toward a shirtless jounin, and hadn't yet realized that she was about to fall on her face. Sakura wasn't going to be the one to tell her. She'd let the backstabbing bitch fall. She deserved much worse after cheating on Lee and Neji, with the other, and then having the nerve to be mad at them when they found out, because she had made both boys promise not to tell anyone. Sakura tried her best to stay out of all the drama.
"Of course not." She answered reproachfully. "Actually, when I saw him this morning I didn't even let him talk to me or explain things. Well, not really anyway. I kicked him out of my- uh, Genma's room."
Tenten raised an eyebrow. "Why were you…? Never mind. I don't want to... know? Neji? Why are you still in here?"
The Hyuuga had come wondering over, approaching his teammate and medic. "Tenten, you're going to fall, you know." The Hyuuga was very cold to the girl now. Sakura couldn't blame him.
Tenten huffed and turned her nose up at him dramatically, trying to scoot back on the table without Neji noticing. His smirk showed that he did.
"Sakura-san," he nodded respectfully, acknowledging, because they were in public, that she was his equal as the head medic. "I believe a certain Jounin is looking for you."
"Oh yeah? Who's that?" Sakura stuck her arm out and snagged a piece of bacon off of some guy's plate as he walked past. He sputtered and turned to protest before seeing Sakura. She winked at him and he smiled back, disregarding her thievery merely because she was Sakura. Even though she had no idea who he was she was sure she had healed him at some point or another, and he certainly knew her. Everyone knew her.
"Hatake-san was asking for you during his -our- breakfast an hour ago. Which you skipped. You're supposed to eat with the captains Sakura, not these filthy, skirt chasing ANBU. And you're not even really eating. You're going to starve."
"Spare me the lecture. I ate with Kaori in our room. She can cook quite well, I'll hope you know." Sakura retorted good naturedly.
Neji shook his head at her. "Medics," He teased lightly.
Sakura growled at him, but couldn't help but smile.
"Hey! Sakura, Neji! An ANBU member was just found outside of the gates! She's covered in blood but won't let Kaori near her. She says she needs to talk to you."
The two shinobi jumped, glancing towards the main staircase that led to the front doors. Two guards and an ANBU member running up them, guards looking angry, ANBU radiating desperation.
"Come to my room." Sakura told the young woman professionally, all hints of humor gone from her voice. a knee-jerk reaction to people covered in blood. You always take them seriously. Sakura led Neji along as they ran up another set of stairs to the hospital wing, bloody ANBU walking swiftly behind, with a slight limp. Tenten, always uninvited, trailed behind at a slower pace, knowing she wasn't actually allowed to follow them.
As they entered, the breathless ANBU bowed at Neji, her team captain -one of two stationed there, the other being Genma- and then turned to nod at Sakura, her medic, and the woman that had saved her life a hundred times over again. "Thank you for talking to me." She said gratefully. She had probably just lost her partner or teammate, was maybe his friend, or lover even. Neji and Genma were normally to busy to talk to the ANBU personally.
"Anko!" Sakura gasped as the ANBU pulled off her cracked mask. She fluttered helplessly around the older woman, looking for injuries, and frowned when she found none except for her ankle that was still healing form a past injury. She instinctively backed away, wondering whose blood it was… hadn't Anko been partnered with Chouji for their last mission…?
"Anko," Neji nodded to her. "What happened? Who did we lose?"
"We were on a stake out, Chouji and I. It was so freaking boring, and we had absolutely nothing to do…" She sounded guilty, as if making an excuse for doing something wrong. "…So we relaxed. He was captured. They attacked us, and two other teams apparently. I don't know which one's though, I only learned about those attacks because our guy was so damn talkative."
Neji glanced at Sakura, trying to communicate through his eyes. They seemed to say so much… "Be careful." He told her quietly.
She frowned. "Huh?"
Tenten sighed, answering for her ex-teammate. "Genma left early this morning, went for a quick solo. We sent Hana after him because he wasn't supposed to go alone. They should have returned… two hours ago?"
Neji nodded, still looking at Sakura.
"Hanabi and Sai went scouting, and Izumo and Kotetsu were checking up on some recent attacks on a nearby village."
Sakura closed her eyes briefly, before allowing them to flutter back open. "So that's four teams altogether, and they went after three, assuming that this guy wasn't lying." She turned on her heel and moved for the opening of the tent, calling over her shoulder carelessly, "I'll be back as soon as I can."
Oh damn oh damn oh damn oh damn!
They were right there! Three Akatsuki members. Now, this would be a wonderful rarity, had she been better prepared. Akatsuki never traveled in anything more than pairs, and since there were three, she found it pretty safe to assume the fourth was around somewhere. But how was Sakura, a little pink haired girl, supposed to take on three, possibly four, S-class criminals? At least, she hoped they would think that.
Sakura was considered pretty tough, for a little pink haired girl, and she had to hope that they wouldn't know that. Underestimation was one of her advantages in battle. Rule number one for Kunoichi's: Use this to your advantage at every given chance.
"Come on out, Darlin', we know you're there," one called out, and despite her hearing being the envy of several leaf shinobi, Sakura couldn't pinpoint the voice. She immediately found that strange, but didn't have time to think about it.
She was prepared to do whatever it took to get her friends back, and had been mentally preparing herself for this moment for the past four years. She was ready to confront the Akatsuki, even if it did result in her death. Not that she thought it would, if they wanted prisoners she was about as good as they came. Neji would do almost anything to get her back, and he was the only one left at the mansion with any command or positon.
Taking a deep breath she tooked the unknown males advise and stepped out into the open, pushing all her fears behind her, leaving her human emotions tangled up in the limbs of the tree she had been on.
One of them immediately snorted. Underestimation, underestimation, underestimation. Sakura's chant turned to laughter and rang in her own head, a sick, maniacal sound that would normally frighten her… But now it just made her stronger and surer of herself.
Cocky bastards.
"Come to get laid by an Akatsuki member?" He asked sarcastically. Sakura mentally rolled her eyes. More like raped. She recognized him as Kisame, Itachi's old partner. So was there really only three of them, or had Itachi been replaced?
"You wish, Sharky. I have reason to believe you have a few of my friends in your custody and I would like them back. I'm asking nicely for you to return them, unharmed."
A blonde Sakura knew to be Deidara choked back his laughter. She frowned. Hadn't he pulled some suicide-bomber trick to kill Gaara? He should be dead! "I hope that wasn't a threat, Darlin', cause if it was it wasn't a very good one, yeah."
"Deidara says Tobi should back up his threats!" The last, orange-masked one chirped obliviously, leaning forward and cocking his head to the side as if he had asked a question. Somehow, he reminded Sakura of Naruto.
Sakura arched one pink eyebrow delicately. "Don't you believe that I can back it up?" Sakura hated guys like these, the men that always assumed they were better than everyone else. It seemed they never even considered the possibility that she could take them. Not that she could, but still.
"Would you like to try me? Only one at a time if that's all right. I want to preserve most of my chakra in case you guys did hurt my friends. I need to be able to heal them."
Kisame shook his head disbelievingly. "Tobi, I guess you can have her. I don't feel like playing around right now, and we need to find those Konoha freaks."
Sakura faked sarcastic suprise. "Really? You're looking at one, Sharky."
Deidara move closer, seeming to inspect her. "I don't see a headband." He remarked, challenging her to actually be telling the truth.
"Do I look that stupid?" Sakura breathed out a quiet laugh, a real one this time. God, they were so careless they almost seemed naïve. "We would get caught if someone found out we had so many ninja staying at one place, and the other villages would try to kill us. No thanks, I prefer to go unnoticed."
"Well, let me see what you got," Deidara said, slipping directly in front of her, as graceful as a dancer.
Kisame made a 'you're-pissing-me-off' sound and growled, "Tobi can take care of her! We have to get going. If we don't find them, Leader's gonna have our heads!"
"What if she knows?" Deidara pointed out, moving that one visible baby blue eye to Kisame.
Sakura mentally reeled and her jaw dropped. Was he so arrogant that he would turn his back on his enemy?! Or… there was definitely something weird about his other eye, the one covered by his bangs… it was entirely possible that he could be watching her with that one eye. Maybe so that she would feel safe enough to attack him?
Slowly, it dawned on her. It was a trap! He turned away from her completely on purpose, expecting her to attack him… She wondered what would happen, but knew she couldn't risk it.
"The rest of them aren't talking, so she probably won't either." Kisame pointed out, sniggering in Sakura's direction. "Leaf ninja think their so important and noble, screaming out their loyalty to some country that doesn't give a shit about them."
Sakura licked her teeth, trying to rid herself of the bitter taste in her mouth. "Every member of our village is important in some way. You three are just oblivious to the way truly good people live. Do you want to go to hell?"
Deidara turnd back to her and laughed. "Darlin', we're atheist. The world is hell."
Sakura sighed and shook her head sadly. She shouldn't pity them or the way they lived, but she was understanding by nature and couldn't help it. "The world is whatever you make it," She told them seriously. "I'm afraid you have chosen to make it hell on earth. Congratulations." Her voice dripped with suicidial sarcasm.
"What do you know about hell, little girl?" Kisame asked incredulously. "You're all innocence, and sugar, and laughter with no regrets."
Sakura sighed, a sound full of long term misery and defeat. "I'm not innocent in any sense of the word, most people tell me that my laughter sounds like a ghosts, and I have more regrets than you could ever know, most of them that would save or end more than a hundred people's lives." Suddenly her voice changed from its dreary depressed tone to a bright, happy little girl tone. "I do like sweet things though."
Deidara's tongue flicked out to the corner of his mouth, licking his lips like a snake. Sakura repressed a shiver. Knowing that he probably didn't even realize he did that, just creeped her out more. "So, Ghost, with the broken past and hundreds of regrets, what's your real name?"
Sakura dropped into a fighting stance, left leg out in front of her, right bent underneath her, and a long, thin dagger in her left hand. She knew she could take them on one at a time and live to tell the tale. He would probably live too though, but whatever.
"I can't remember."
Kisame grinned, shark like teeth flashing in the late morning sun. "I'd like to make you." He said deviously, reaching for Samehada, the blade slung carelessly over his back.
Deidara groaned. "We don't have time!" He seemed to remember, now that it wasn't him that would get to fight. "We have to find the leaf ninja before sunset tonight."
Tobi clapped his hands like a four year old, oblivious to the Akatsuki reputation that he was quickly diminishing. "Let's take her with us!"
Deidara, looking politely disintrested, just grunted and began examining the ground.
Kisame shrugged, apparently forgetting his earlier urge for violence. "Alright then, c'mon 'Ghost,' you're coming with us."
Sakura gave him a strange look, standing up to her full height, an impressive five foot nine. "What? Just like that, you're taking me with you?"
Kisame raised a light blue eyebrow. "Yeah? And if you help us out and don't fight back, we won't even make you our prisoner. We don't have the time to take care of you right now. Just come with us and we'll deal with you later."
Sakura rolled her eyes. "But it won't matter to me either way. Why don't I just cause you guys some trouble right here and now and get you in deep with your 'big bad boss'?"
Deidara laughed at the nickname. "Better not let him hear you calling him that."
"If you come with us you might have a chance to save your comrades. But hurry up and decide, because if you're coming we need to get going." Kisame looked at her impatiently.
"And if I don't come with you?" Sakura asked them.
"Then we'll be forced to sick Tobi on you," Deidara answered lightly. "While we go search for your 'friends,' of course."
Sakura knew what her choice would be. She'd have to follow to have any chance of saving Genma and the others. How they were captured so easily – none of the Akatsuki seemed to be injured – she had no idea, but she was pretty confident that she was stronger than her captain anyway.
"Okay," She answered slowly. "I guess this is best for everyone involved, so I'll come."
Kisame grinned evilly and Sakura immediately regretted her decision.
"What are- Heyy!" Kisame lifted her up by her collar and suddenly she could only see black, drifting out of unconsciousness much quicker than was normal with a head wound, and a sharp pain in the back of her head told her that that was exactly what it was.
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