Dust, dust everywhere. Dammit, she hated dust!
Dust in the bedsheets, dust on the curtains, dust in the rug, dust on every surface of the room, dust in her eyes as she shook out the dust in the heavy quilted blanket that was on the dusty bed.
She coughed and rubbed at her watering eyes, ultimately giving up on beating out the filth that was stuck in the blanket. She couldn't do it here in this dusty bedroom, not now. It'd only make the room messier.
Everything would have to be cleaned. Not only that, but she had to clean their rooms too, which would take up way too much time after she had glimpsed the state they were already in. But not starting on something would make her look like a very bad housekeeper.
So she formed out a plan that more than likely would take up all of the day and most of the day after. It was still only noon, but the long trip and ride to the island was a lot to stomach for today. Not to mention that crappy first impression she gave.
But she couldn't resist, it was almost as if he was presenting her with the opportunity to humiliate him. Though she was the only stranger there and the other two men had seemed completely un-fazed by it. They had both probably worked for much longer and much harder than the boy had, and were familiar with wearing torn clothes. Sakura on the other hand, almost never saw anyone dressed indecently from where she grew up. It was too good an opportunity and too much of a temptation.
Sakura took the time to swiftly change into better work clothes and fold her previous outfit away. She wanted to leave her bags somewhere far, far away from this dusty room. But sadly, there wasn't any place else that was much cleaner.
There was no water supply that could just be easily wasted on washing clothes. It was probable that neither of the two used it to wash in either. They were probably primitive enough to bathe in the ocean. She had to resist the urge to roll her eyes, but when there wasn't much of something, sometimes you just had to make do with what you had. That was one of the first and hardest lessons she learned in life.
It didn't take a long search through the house for her to find what she needed. A heavy metal tub and a spare bundle of kindling to burn in order to heat water up. But she wasn't so lucky in bringing out outside, it was much more heavy than it looked and she barely avoided dropping it on her feet on more than one occasion before she finally got it where she needed it.
She had to find a space with no grass on it in order to build up a fire pit. It took her another twelve minutes to go back into the house with another, thankfully smaller and less heavy bucket, a shovel, and as much dirty cloth as she could find. Which was a lot.
Then she brought out a spare rope, that look distantly like it had once belonged on a ship, and tied it extra tightly to a pair of trees that weren't too far apart.
Seriously, if she had to do all of this from scratch, she could only guess at how they had washed their clothes before.
After a fire pit was dug, a small flame started and a dozen or so trips to the beach to fill up several buckets of freezing sea-water, enough was finally made to fill the tub. But by the time she was finished, the water had turned lukewarm from the chilly weather, even though it was spring. She unwrapped her own bar of soap and frowned. It was her only bar. But perhaps she could get more later on...
Sakura first dumped in the blanket that had been on her bed, along with a few other scraps that had been on Kisame's and Suigetsu's beds. She would really need to sew those in the near future. It took the best of half an hour to finally work all the nastiness from all the fabrics, and another ten wringing out the water and hanging them up in the make-shift clothes-line.
After her labors were finally over, Sakura realized that there was still much more to do. The rest of the sheets were not clean, nor were the clothes. And to her dismay she realized that the water was too dirty to continue washing which meant she would need to boil more buckets.
She bit her lip to stop the tears forming in her eyes. She had already worked so hard. Her arm and back muscles ached from the strain of carrying the tub and buckets of water, and her fingers felt raw and numb from the mix of scrubbing and drying off in the cold air.
She clenched her hurting hands and stood up, she still had work to do and sitting around and crying wouldn't get her anywhere.
With firm arms she dumped the water out and marched down to the beach with arms clenched around the empty bucket.
...
Five hours later, at sunset, Sakura was not yet finished with the last of the laundry.
She couldn't believe it. After all this time, pushing her limbs onward even though they felt like dead weights, how could she still not be done!?
She glared at the remaining sheets with malice, grabbed a nearby charred stick, and hit the pile as hard as she could. Resulting in only leaving a few dusty bits of burnt wood behind on an unfeeling, still-dirty pile, that was now slightly flattened a little at the top.
She scowled at the laundry, feeling only slightly less frustrated. The laundry remained motionless.
"You know, if beating the clothes made the job any easier, I'm sure me and Suigetsu could've done it ourselves." A deep voice spoke from behind her.
She jumped in surprise and whirled around to face Kisame. He wore a wide grin which grew only wider at her reaction. She felt a hot blush burn her whole face at the guilt of being caught.
"M-Mr. Hoshigaki! I'm sorry, I was just uh.." She fumbled with the right words, shifting nervously on her feet.
He laughed at her flustered expression, "Kisame."
She blinked. "What?"
"Call me Kisame" he clarified.
"Oh," She smiled softly, "Okay."
Kisame shifted past her and reached for a stick on the ground. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing but he beat her to it.
"We're eatin' outside tonight." He said with a wide grin, pulling up a line of fish that he must have caught while out on the water that afternoon.
She sat in silent wonder as he sliced the fish. She had eaten fish before-- but she had never actually seen fish being prepared.
The other teenager approached them from behind, observing for a moment and asking. "Fish tonight, eh Kisame?"
Sakura jumped, realizing that the teenager was behind her.
"Suigetsu, go help Miss. Haruno finish her work." Kisame ordered from his spot where he was skinning the fish without looking away from his work. Suigetsu tch'ed. But didn't protest other than that.
She was about to warn him about the heavy tub, that they would need to fill buckets up to fill it because it was much too heavy to carry, when he shocked her by easily lifting the tub, dumping it of it's dirty contents and bringing it down to the beach.
She stood open-mouthed for a moment.
"If you stay like that you might catch flies." Kisame's amused laugh called, breaking her out of her trance."
She scowled slightly, reluctantly following after him.
...
When the two weren't talking to each other, they worked as a pretty good team.
Suigetsu obviously didn't know what he was doing exactly, but all she'd have to do was give him directions and he'd get it right the very first time. He was very mindful of his tasks, and very observant. Sakura couldn't help feeling impressed.
Striking up conversation however, was a bad idea waiting to happen.
"You've done this before haven't you?"
"No."
"Then how are you so good at it? Even I've never been able to learn that quickly."
"Maybe you're just bad at it."
"Excuse me?!"
"You heard me right."
"Well I apologize for being raised in a civil society and wasting some of my life in public schools instead of working."
He stopped and gave her a cold glare. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hey, if you two brats don't stop yappin' and don't start workin' then I'm eatin' your damn fish for you!" Kisame bellowed at them.
So they returned to work. Suigetsu went inside and got a set of wicker baskets for Sakura to place everything in. Sakura took down the dry laundry and nicely folded everything. And together they both hung up the last of the wet cloth to dry over-night.
When they returned to Kisame he had already finished the food, wrapping up pieces of fish into bits of seaweed and cooking them over the fire pit that Sakura had made earlier.
She couldn't help but feel as though she had never truly tasted fish until then. The seaweed held in all of the natural flavors and added in extra sea salt from the ocean, intensifying the taste even more.
Kisame was so wonderful at cooking them too, never once did she have to spit out an extra bone or a bad piece of meat.
The taste itself was hard to explain. Like trying to describe the color red to a person who was born blind. It was a pleasant sort of salty with the district taste of white meat in the back. Mouth-watering and wholly delicious. She had never even known that she had a taste for fish.
She felt full and warm by the time she was doing eating, all negative emotions drained away and replaced with a happy content. "Thank you for that lovely meal Mr. Kisame." Her politeness was no doubt fueled by her full stomach. "I'll take care of the laundry, and retire for the evening. Good-night both of you."
She turned to the baskets, somehow managing to juggle them all in her arms and carry them into the house, feeling quite happy with herself.
"You purposely got fish didn't you?" Suigetsu whispered as soon as she was out of earshot.
"Yeah," Kisame admitted casually with a small shrug. "I'm not so cruel as to let her face the kitchen just yet." He grinned at the teenager. "It's a nightmare."
...
She slipped into the sheets, burying herself snuggly into her bed, peeking her head out to prop onto her pillow. She inhaled the new scent her bed, which was now much better than the smell of ancient mothballs that it had before. The sheets themselves smelled like a cool Atlantic breeze, and if she closed her eyes, she could even see the way the sheets had shifted in the outside wind.
Sakura smiled, it was only her first night here. The rest of her room was still smelly. She was sore, aching, sweaty and dirty but why should she even care? Now that her sheets were warm from her body heat and her mind was as exhausted as her body and her fingers felt like torture, she could still finally have a good night's sleep without any lingering thoughts about her parents or Tsunade.
Sakura's jaw dropped in shock at the sight before her. The whole kitchen was littered with greasy plates and uncleaned silverware. Dishes were piled on top of each other in what looked like it should be impossibly high stacks. White clumps that looked suspiciously like bird droppings also were scattered in separate areas-- some such areas included the uncleaned dishes. Half eaten food was crusted dry on some plates, while still-full cups sat useless in various places.
It was just like something out of a horror story!
Sakura whimpered. They actually expected her to clean this? By the end of the day?
Out of nowhere, a seagull landed on the table beside her. Greeting her with a loud caw.
Sakura let out an ungraceful squeak in surprise, stumbled over something—most likely more dishes-- and fell hard on her rear.
Okay, this wasn't exactly how she had pictured her morning starting off...
Standing up and rubbing her aching backside, she frowned as she spotted a bucket of foamy water in the near corner. Dipping a finger into it, she realized that it was still lukewarm. They must not have left that long ago.
She knew what Tsunade would say if she could see her now in this sad position.
'Haruno's never give up Sakura, you can count on that. Haruno's never give up. So don't let our family down, I believe in you.'
Sakura sighed, cursing her one remaining family member for becoming the unwanted inspiration she needed to force herself onward despite all of the still-recent sores all over her body. Then she steeled her will, pulled up both sleeves and dove into work.
Okay, I've written much more than this. But if I don't separate it like, right now, my brain is going to explode.
....
I love fish