Chapter 2: A life for another
"Oh, shit."
Naruto vaguely heard the stream of curses Sasuke let loose under his breath as his teammate quickly got down on his hands and knees. He himself didn't have the courage to peer down the side of the cliff, afraid of what he might see. But he did see the black-haired genin's body tense, then draw back and face him.
"Sasuke-kun, help me!"
"Naruto, get Kakashi now!"
Was it Sakura's scream or Sasuke's order? He wasn't sure but he knew it was the panic he heard that stirred him back to life. He turned around and started running to where they had left her sensei, voices echoing after him and pushing him to run even faster. Although it wasn't very far, Naruto felt as if he had ran for hours. Finally, he emerged into the training ground, only to find their sensei nowhere in sight.
"Kakashi-sensei!" he yelled, hollered, shouted-- all but screamed the jounin's name over and over again. Half of him wanted to go back but the thought that he wouldn't be able to help even if he did prevented him to do so. "Sensei! Sakura-chan's in trouble!" he cried out hoarsely into the empty field, both fists clenched in frustration.
"Naruto?" a voice asked from behind him with slight amusement.
"Kakashi!" he exclaimed and quickly whirled around to face the older shinobi. Kakashi smiled down at him-- at least, Naruto thought he was smiling, it was rather hard to tell with that mask of his-- but the smile slowly slipped off his face at the frightened look in the genin's eyes. "Come with me, quick!"
"What happened?" Kakashi asked as he followed Konoha's loudest into the forest. Naruto gave a reply, but the wind picked up and he didn't hear a word of the boy. It both piqued his curiosity and alarmed him, how the blonde genin led him almost frantically to wherever it was they were going, running almost haphazardly through the forest. "What happened?" Kakashi repeated when they stopped at last, his charge panting and bent over with hands on his knees for support.
"Saku..ra-chan...she...fell..." Naruto said between gasps of air, "I don't know! Ask Sasuke!" he said finally, pointing to where he had left his black-haired teammate on all-fours.
But all they saw was Sakura lying on the ground unconscious.
-oOoOoOo-
What happened?
'Am I dead?' Sakura thought as she opened her eyes only to see white in front of her. For a moment she thought she was in heaven already, but her vision focused soon enough and she realized it was only a white ceiling. Her body didn't even feel sore.
"Oh! I think she's awake already!" a girl's voice she recognized said after the sound of a door opening. Soft footsteps came into the room and then the door closed.
"Ino..?" she called in a rather croaky voice to her former best friend, trying to sit up. A pair of hands helped her, but they were larger than Ino's and a bit harder. The blonde hair and blue eyes in her line of sight weren't hers either. "Naruto?"
"Ohayo, Sakura-chan," Naruto said in an uncharacterstically soft voice. He seemed somewhat...subdued. Sakura raised an eyebrow but didn't comment.
"I'll tell Kakashi she'd woken up," a male voice said. Ino, who was busy arranging flowers in a vase on the table next to her bed, nodded without turning her eyes off her work. Sakura watched Shikamaru put down a basket of fruits next to the vase and then leave. Silence reigned in the room then, broken only by the soft rustling of the flowers and Chouji's ever constant munching on some chips at one corner of the room.
Sakura felt...she didn't know. Disappointment? Anger? Rejection?...Loneliness, maybe. Naruto and all the members of Team 8 were there. All her closest friends had come to to visit her except him. Sasuke-kun.
Wait a minute. Where were they anyway?
"What happened?" she asked the question that had been the first thing to occur to her when she woke up. And, deciding that Ino of all people should know the answer to her other question, asked it as well, "Where's Sasuke-kun?" Naruto and Ino stared at her, Ino's hands half-way in adding a twig of cherry blossom to the fabulous arrangement she was making. Even Chouji had stopped eating. "Naruto? Ino? Chouji?"
At some point or another, Shikamaru had come back with their sensei. Kakashi walked over to the bed and looked down at her.
"That's what we want to ask you."
-oOoOoOo-
It was noon when Naruto and Kakashi found Sakura lying unconscious on the forest ground without a trace of Sasuke anywhere. They had immediately taken her to Konoha hospital where the doctor had told them the girl just needed some rest. She woke up the following morning lacking the memories she needed to answer her own, and many others', questions-- the latest she could remember was sitting with Sasuke and Naruto and waiting for Kakashi. What came after that was a blank. She was taken home by her mother around an hour after she woke up with the doctor's reassurance that her missing memories would return to her eventually. All she needed was some rest.
And rest she was given.
Kakashi forbid her to train and when she wouldn't listen, he suspended their training sessions altogether, giving the reason that it was pointless since Sasuke was not around. Naruto had fumed a bit over this of course, but when he finally saw the whole picture, he consented since it would help Sakura-chan. She resorted to doing self-training but her mother had once caught her. Now both she and, surprisingly, Ino took it their duties to stop her from strenuous work. Her mother she could understand, but Ino? One day, she couldn't contain her curiosity any longer and asked the blonde.
"Ino?"
"Yeah?" Ino replied distractedly, closing the door to the glass case of irises. They were in Yamanaka's flower shop Ino was looking after today.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, feeling the violet petal of a flower she didn't know slide between her fingers. She quickly drew away though, lest she destroys it or Ino reprimands her for messing with it, whichever comes first.
"Doing what?"
"Helping take care of me," Sakura answered, walking over towards the counter Ino stood behind of. "You really don't have to, you know...."
"What do you mean I don't have to?" Ino asked rather angrily, turning around to face her, "You're my best--" she abruptly stopped, shaking her head. She turned her eyes away from Sakura for a moment and when she finally looked back, cool blue eyes met startled green ones."Don't think I'm doing this for you, forehead," she scoffed. "I'm doing this for myself. You're the only one who knows where Sasuke possibly is so you better hurry up and get better." She didn't say anything else after that, turning back to the flowers. Sakura noticed she was just running her hands in between the stems though, not really doing anything.
Sasuke-kun...She had been to intent on trying to remember 'What happened?' that she had almost forgotten her other question-- 'Where's Sasuke-kun?' Sakura slightly got irritated with herself. How could she?
-oOoOoOo-
Three days passed. Sakura walked the streets of Konoha feeling the shinobis of the village slightly troubled by one certain Uchiha's absence. Konoha wasn't Konoha without him, was it? She sat down to dinner that night still wondering where he was and if he was having dinner too. She refused to believe the rumors that he was dead or that he had tourned into a rogue shinobi. And she knew that only she could destroy those rumors, that was, if she would regain her memories soon.
What happened?
Where's Sasuke-kun?
A metal spoon fell rather loudly to the floor, followed soon after by the harsh sound of chair legs moving against stone as it was pushed back hastily. Sakura stood, staring straight in front of her.
"Sakura?" her mother called quietly, placing a hand over her daughter's. It felt cold, clammy. Haunted green eyes turned to her.
"I-I remember...."
"Yes?" her mother prompted.
"I...I killed Sasuke-kun."
--end of chapter 2--
Standard Disclaimers applied-- I don't own Naruto!
Author's Notes:
1. See Chapter 1.
2. Sorry for the long wait, made even longer by my 'misbehaving' on me. XD
3. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!