Chapter 3 – Your Life Is a Lie
Sakura awoke to the sound of water dripping. It was a constant drip, once every 5 seconds, and it hit a spot close enough to her face that she would get hit by part of the minuscule splash. Groaning, she rolled over to face away from the pestering water. "You're awake." A husky voice stated from a small distance away. In an instant, Sakura's eyes snapped open as she recalled the previous day's events. The mission, her team, Katoru, the Akatsuki.
Forcing her body to keep a steady breathing, she attempted to play off her awakening. "Five more minutes mom…I'll make breakfast when I get up." She droned out with just the right amount of sleepiness laced into her voice. Simultaneously, she began to take in her surroundings. From the way she was facing, all she could see is sheer concrete wall a few feet in front of her. The wall was riddled with cracks, chips, and dark stains that, given her circumstances, she reasonably assumed were blood.
"Don't play games with me kunoichi. You'll find, to your disappointment, that I always win them." Sakura didn't even have to be facing the man to pick up on the smile in his tone.
'Why the hell are these Akatsuki so casual?' Sakura wondered. 'So much for being a professional organization of killers…I feel like I'm back at the academy, being scolded by a teacher!' Focusing back on where she was, she estimated that the man was no more than 15 feet behind her. She would try a surprise attack, but she had no way of knowing if there was a barrier of any sort between them and it could prove quite troublesome if she went to throw a punch and ended up hitting tempered glass or steel bars.
"I guess there's no fooling an Akatsuki…" Sakura mumbled, pulling her body up into a sitting position. To her surprise, she found this action to be slightly difficult. The wear of her daring escape had set into her muscles and began to make them ache; not to mention she was well on her way to starvation and dehydration. For a split second she contemplated opening her mouth and catching that dripping water, but decided against it for sanitary purposes. "So why am I here?" She asked, finally deciding to turn around as she leaned her back against the wall she had been previously facing.
"I have an offer for you." The voice replied. Even if she squinted, Sakura couldn't make out so much as an outline of a person in the room with her. There was a solo lamp handing from the high ceiling of the cement room and the only barrier between her and the shrouded man was a curtain of pitch black darkness. She couldn't even make out how far the room went back. She needed to draw this man closer, despite what the logical part of her screamed, so that she could judge just who exactly she was dealing with.
"I will consider the option of an offer if I can see who is making it. As things stand now, I could be making a deal with the devil for all I know." Placing her feet flat on the ground, Sakura pulled her knees up to her chest in a defensive action that also allowed her the opening to spring onto her feet if needed. She felt the rough slide of gritty clothes over her skin and was momentarily distracted by the disgust of her current hygiene situation.
"You wouldn't be making a deal with the devil, kunoichi. You would be making one with a god." The man corrected as he stepped from the shadows. Sakura looked up in slight wonder as she took in his appearance. He couldn't have been shorter than 6'3", which was well over her 5'8" but not so big that she had a speed advantage and that could prove to be quite problematic in battle. He wore the usual black Akatsuki cloak with the trademark red clouds. His hair was an interesting shade of orange and his face was teeming with piercings.
But none of those details were what caught and held her attention. Cliché as it was, that detail was his eyes. Being an Anbu, Sakura had seen many different types of eyes, from the Sharingan of the Uchiha Clan, to the Hyuuga's Byakugan, and every eye color under the rainbow. But his, his were immensely unique. There was a rippling effect in them that was almost hypnotic as it pulled you in and the blank shade of the lavender/grey seemed to add to the never ending feeling when staring into them.
The silence drew out as Sakura continued to stare, awestruck, into the eyes of Akatuski's leader. "Captivating, aren't they?" It was only when she heard his teasing comment and noticed him smirking that she was finally able to shake of the minor state of hypnosis. Sakura scowled as she directed her attention back down to the ground.
"Pein." Sakura addressed him.
"So you know of me, I am flattered." The sheer calm of the situation was starting to become unsettling to Sakura.
"Of course I do. There isn't a single Bingo Book that doesn't contain each member of the Akatsuki. You and you're pack of heathens have gained quite the negative reputation." Sakura figured she may as well try to relax herself and just go with this atmosphere. Further stress would only add to her not so great condition and what's the worse that's going to happen if she let's her guard down?
"Heathen is such a bad choice of wording to describe us, excluding Hidan. I would say something more along the lines of Revolutionaries or Saviors." Pein crossed his arms, looking down at Sakura with a small smile.
"Revolutionaries? Saviors! That is the biggest load of shit I've heard in my entire life and believe me, being a ninja means I've been fed a lot of lies already. Saviors…that is the polar opposite of what you should be described as. You plan to wipe out not only Konoha, but every main village, just because you have a fucking god complex? How is that being a savior? Where I come from, we call that a psychopathic murderer!" Sakura spat out at him, the anger boiling in her blood and working her up with each word.
The smile disappeared from Pein's face and was replaced by a small frown. "You said it yourself Sakura," she cringed at the way her name sounded when he spoke it. "You've grown up being fed lies. A ninja, of all people, should realize that we don't live in a black and white world. Good and Bad is all objective and situational." Pein squatted down a few feet in front of Sakura and looked her dead in the eye. "If I have to kill a few to save many, is that bad?"
A look of shock passed onto Sakura's face and it took her a second to pull out a rebuttal. "But, you don't aim to take out merely a few. Entire villages full of ninja. That is not just a few people." Determination set into Sakura's eyes.
"You and I both know, Sakura," her teeth gritted and she glared at him. "That the average villager out-numbers the ninja by ten to one. What I set out to do is erase our world's problems. We have too many separate lands, each with too much power and that causes fighting. That causes the unnecessary loss of life. I wish to eliminate that. So tell me, am I still so very wrong in my morals?"
"That – you…yes! This has been the set up of our world for hundreds of years. Who are you to come and try to change that? You speak for the wants of one man, you don't consider how many people actually like the way life is right now. It's a selfish-" Sakura's argument was cut off when Pein's right hand shot out and his fingers wrapped around her throat.
"You know nothing of who I speak for." Pein growled. He leaned forward, putting his weight into pinning Sakura to the wall by her neck. Though his grip was like iron, it was controlled. Sakura wasn't having her blood or airflow ruthlessly cut off like when Kisame had choked her; she was simply being held in place like a dog who had just misbehaved. "You are a ninja, a high-ranking one at that, of a very powerful village. You may see a lot of horrible things in your life, you may be put through them, but you were trained for that." Pein's eyes held a fire that Sakura had only seen once before. It was the same fire that Sasuke's held when he talked of Itachi. "You, kunoichi, aren't put into compromising situation that you weren't prepared for on a daily basis. You don't suffer famine, disease, or hunger. You live a sheltered life."
Worry began to take over when Pein's grip steadily increased in pressure. Now her breathing was becoming labored, now she began to feel lightheaded from her blood being cut off. "I speak for the small towns that your village steps all over. I speak for the girls and boys sold into slavery because their family needs the money to pay taxes to your village. I speak for the women who've lost their husbands in pointless wars, for the children who grow up orphaned and alone because their parents died and they had no one else."
His last point struck a serious nerve in Sakura, and Pein saw that. "You know first-hand of those kinds of children. You're teammates, Naruto and Sasuke. They did not have parents to love and comfort them like you did. No, they lost that to their village. It is you, Sakura, who is selfish. Look at all you have, that so many others do not. Look at what your village has taken from your own friends, and then tell me that what I'm doing is wrong. You're village is corrupt and you know it, but you cannot act out because you are nothing more than a pawn to them."
Tears began to spill over Sakura's eyes as she thought of the pain and loneliness that her teammates faced. 'He's right.' She thought. 'After a tough or depressing mission, I could always go home to mom and cry. Mom would comfort me, tell me everything would be alright. What did Naruto, Sasuke and even Kakashi have? Nothing. They had nothing, and I had everything.'
"Sakura," Pein whispered, his eyes softening more than what she believed an S-class criminal was capable of. He removed his hand from her throat and placed it on the wall next to her head. "What I offer you, is freedom. A way out of your old, deceitful life and into a new one, full of truth and progress. In exchange for your help and cooperation, I offer you a chance to start over and make a difference. A positive one."
Sakura's mind was reeling. She was scared, no, she was terrified. Not of Pein, not of the Akatsuki, but of what they stood for. Sakura understood where he came from, what he wanted. But she was clueless as to how it could be possible. Everything she was taught, since being a child, has just been revealed to be a lie. In the academy, they has taught that the Akatsuki were a dangerous group of criminals who were blood-thirsty and would stop at nothing to take down the villages. They had never mentioned the motivation behind their plans.
"What will happen to Naruto?" Sakura whispered back. Pein smiled again, seeing that his words had set in and glad that Sakura hadn't rejected his ideas immediately like every other pawn of the village.
"We still need the Kyuubi. But, if you agree to join us in this conquest, then you can have a chance to save his life. During the extraction of the demon from its host, we rip away the force that tells the host to beat its heart and fill its lungs with air. That it what kills them. If you were to be by his side during that extraction, your medical ninjutsu could replace that force. You could beat his heart, fill his lungs with air, save him from the clutches of death."
"I - " Sakura took a deep breath and broke eye contact, turning her gaze down towards the ground. "I need time to think." She mumbled. There was another long pause and a heavy sense of both hope and despair hung heavy between them. Sakura could feel Pein's heavy gaze practically burning a hole into the top of her head.
"So be it. I'm sorry, but all I can give you is one week. Don't worry though, one week is all it should take to convince you that you can be useful here. You won't be a simple pawn, but an actual player." Pein stood up and she heard his footsteps as he turned to leave. "You will see that you've come to need us, just as we need you." His footsteps paused at the edge of the darkness.
"If it's not too much to ask, a bath and some food would be helpful. I can't really make a logical decision when all that's on my mind is my hunger and how disgusting these dirty clothes feel." Sakura requested with a small laugh.
"Of course, I will send Konan down shortly to retrieve and escort you to your new living quarters. Please do excuse this terrible holding cell, it was only used a precaution in case you were…uncooperative. I'm glad that you seem to have more sense then that, and that is why I can trust you on your own." There was lightness back in his voice that calmed Sakura, as well as a surprising hint of respect. "But just in case I am misjudging you, let me tell you this." Pein turned his head and locked eyes with Sakura as she had lifted her head. "If you try anything involving escape or bringing harm to one of my underlings, I will make sure that you regret it."
Sakura merely nodded and proceeded to watch his back as he disappeared into the darkness. 'I can't believe this is happening.' Sakura thought as she awaited the blue haired woman known as Konan. 'Naruto, am I making the right choice? I don't know if he's telling me the truth or just twisting my perception of it. I don't know what to think anymore.' She placed her chin upon her knees and sighed. 'Naruto, would you hate me for throwing my life away, just to help you?'
