Unobtainable
By: emeraldoni
xxx
We remember the past…
xxx
He likes to watch her when she isn't paying attention. When she is so focused with some menial task: mixing herbs, weaving loose bandages, sharpening weapons… she is beautiful. He wants to touch her, but it is not allowed. It's forbidden. Wrong. She doesn't want to touch a monster. No one touches him. Ever.
But she looks up and brushes a short strand or hair behind a petite ear and smiles, eyes glowing like sunlight through lush trees.
He yearns.
He desires her. Her affection, her love, her acceptance… he wants to be the only man she thinks about. He wants her to forget about Sasuke, about Naruto, about every other man that is in her team, in her village, in her life. He wants her vision to be filled with Juugo.
Juugo, Juugo, Juugo, Juugo….
He skips away as someone calls her name.
"Sakura!" They yell. She drops her kunai to her lap, looking up expectedly.
"Yeah?" She asks, as a boy with sharp hair walks into the clearing.
"You by yourself?" He asks, black eyes shifting around the area with careful scrutiny. He is suspicious. Juugo withdraws even further into the leaves. The tree branch creaks slightly beneath him, but the other shinobi pays no attention, his eyes settling on her. On Sakura.
"We're about ready to head out. We need to get back tonight."
"Already? Has it been that long?"
The man looks at her oddly. "You're usually so anxious to get home."
She laughs and he decides to settle down next to her, one leg propped up, the other stretched out as he leans against the tree. His eyes rest too long, and Juugo feels his chest tighten, his muscles tense. Eyes blur.
But she just smiles and looks up into the trees, in his direction, and says, "The weather has made this trip…bearable."
The man is silent. "Hm." He says.
Juugo leaves. He will have more time with her today. She will be busy, with traveling and teammates, and little scratches they will receive from succulent branches that appear from nowhere.
When he returns that night they have left, no trace of them left behind. He wants to follow, but a shadow morphs beside him.
No, it whispers, bright eyes swirling red, smoky body twisting around Juugo's hunched shoulders. She is not yours, never yours. Mine, his, theirs. Never yours. Too weak to hold, too weak to follow. Too, too weak….
Sakura gets home that night, and her apartment feels empty because no one is there watching her. She wonders if maybe she made a mistake when she befriended the enemy, but isn't that better that what he did?
Guilt still twists her belly, guilt that maybe her ties to Konoha are not ties or loyalty, but ties of friendship.
(She would leave if her friends did. What was this place but empty stone eyes and hollow beaten paths and painful memories?)
She thinks about Naruto and her love for him, and Ino and everyone else who she shares a shaky bond with. He fear is being left alone, though she doesn't know why because, when has she ever been alone?
(Maybe it's because of him, her heart whispers, but she easily pushes that thought away. She's practiced at forgetting.)
No one but the guards notice when she strolls though the shadowed gates of her home. They nod and she nods back. They know that she needs time outside of the city. They don't know that tonight she is classified as a traitor.
(She's more reliant on her new friend than she realized.)
And Sasuke stares at a fire as Juugo disappears once more into the shadowed woods, and he mulls over the past, but does not regret it. He hangs on to it with a fragile string, dragging it behind him as he searches for compensation.
(He still feels the blood as it drips down his face, warm, soft, like the stream midsummer.)
And it's almost Spring now and he knows that his subordinate does not listen. Something will have to be done. No distractions. The string is thin.
It will break.
Xxx
…because the future is terrifying.
xxx