A walk around the perimeter of the property seemed like a much worse idea by the time Sakura had actually gotten back to her tiny farmhouse. The walk into the village and back had been cumulatively kind of tiring, even though it was barely after nine in the morning. She wasn't at all used to that kind of exercise.
Or, if she was honest, really... any kind of exercise.
She arrived back to her new place full of its stumpy little trees and hard packed earth and wondered if her nebulous plans to attack that problem herself - probably with an axe - were really as feasible as she liked to think. She wasn't very fit, and it seemed like an overwhelmingly physical task. Maybe she'd do alright if she began small... did one tiny bit at a time...
She put off following the crumbling fence that marked her property line, but there wasn't enough precious phone battery to spend her time messing around on the internet. She didn't have any friends out here, and she had no books or films or, or even handicrafts, which she was universally terrible at anyway, with which to occupy herself. What did people do in their downtime in the dark ages before the internet?
In despair, Sakura dug up a rag and dusted the inside of her tiny farm house. It needed it, anyway. The windows and the ledges were dark with dust. When she opened the place up to air it out, a soft, sweet-smelling breeze came through, which was at least mildly cheering.
She shook the dust sheet out, beat out the rug, and gave the window panes an unenthusiastic swipe. Then she tossed her new blanket onto her bed - what did they mean, 'wash before use'? She didn't have a washing machine, and she wasn't walking back into the village to access one, so that was clearly too hard - and peered at her pillow uncertaintly, wondering if it was a good idea to bury her face in that without a case.
Probably... not.
After a second staring, Sakura slid a teeshirt on her pillow and tucked the sleeves in. It was... like a case. Right? Right.
Briefly, Sakura wondered how Mikoto would feel about the manner in which she was living in her house. A cloud passed before the bright morning sun. The breeze seemed suddenly colder. Quite a bit colder, actually. Hmm.
Maybe she'd get a nice proper case later. And... wash things. When she knew how she was going to do that. Was there a laundromat in the village? She hadn't seen one, but she certainly didn't have a washing machine out here.
That was a problem for when she actually had electricity. Baby steps, she reminded herself.
She went to drop the dust sheet in her chest, and paused upon cracking the lid open. The air smelled like metal, and of an old place that hadn't seen daylight in forever. In its shadowy innards was a glint of metal, so she dropped the sheet and peered inside at a surprising collection of worn tools.
One of them, she was pleased to see, was definitely an axe. Another was some kind of pick, and there was one with a head on it that looked perfect for breaking up the hard packed earth.
"Huh," said Sakura. Then she unearthed the tools and set them carefully on the floor nearest the door before she put the dust sheet away. She'd probably need them.
Maybe, Sakura thought, she could try cutting up some wood tomorrow. How hard could it be to cut down trees no thicker than her leg? And then she'd have firewood. If she still didn't have electricity by then, afire would be pretty welcome for the light and the heat.
After that reminder, she turned her phone back on. It dinged cheerfully. The medical board had emailed her and officially suspended her from practice.
She ignored that and dialled the electricity company. They didn't seem thrilled with her urgency.
"Sorry," said the woman who'd answered, "you're where?"
"Dawn Valley," Sakura repeated patiently, perched on top of the chest and wriggling her toes in the sunlight from her open door. The sun had finally woken up properly for the day, and now it was only cool in the shade. Outside, all she could see was grasses and dirt and trees.
It looked like a place needed more than a RapidMart to put it on the map, at least as far as big electrical providers were concerned.
"I'll see what we can do," said the telephonist, sounding more worried than reassuring. "I know you said it was urgent, but that's so far out, ah, I'm very sorry, but..."
"Sure, okay," said Sakura, chewing on a strand of pink hair, "but it won't be more than a week, right?"
"Oh.. er, I don't really have experience with anything that far into the countryside? If you were in the city, I'd think it would probably take no more than two days, but I don't really..."
"Okay, well, you can check, right? And email me?"
The voice on the line perked right up. "Oh, yes, I can do that. Certainly. I'll let you know."
Sakura made a relieved noise. At least she'd get a timeline for getting electricity connected. She had a finite supply of canned tea, after all, and didn't look forward to any efforts to boil water over the open fire.
She'd need to get a fridge. She hadn't seen anything that big being sold at the general store, but she bet Kakuzu would at least know how to get one out here to her. He seemed grumpy, but he'd been like that with Hashirama, too - and it had seemed a lot more personal then.
The general store guy was just a grumpy human being, Sakura decided. Some people were just like that. She'd know -she'd married one, once upon a time.
She watched the dust motes dance in the light and daydreamed briefly about the fridge she'd left with Sasuke in his giant, beautiful, stately house: huge, with two doors, individually temperature-controlled compartments. There was a lever on the front that spat out icy water from a spigot if you remembered to fill the reservoir. She missed it.
If Sakura was sitting here fantasizing about Sasuke's whitegoods, it was definitely time to get back to her feet and get on with her day. She toed the door closed behind her as she left. Time to see how big his place really was.
The answer was: it was big. Huge, even. It took her mind to get to the south boundary of the property than it did to go into the village.
The terrain was less forgiving. Sakura thought of herself as a person who was reasonably dextrous - she cut into other human beings and rearranged their insides for a living for years, after all. She had pretty good nerves and very deft hands. But she still found herself skidding on slick, half-rotted leaf litter or stumbling over hidden dips, ruts and holes whose provenance she could not determine.
At least the day was bright and clear and not very cold in the sun. The air smelled like earth and grasses and, despite the relative scarcity of clouds, a very little like rain encroaching. Birds sang to each other from where they were hidden among the mess of overgrown farmland, and occasionally Sakura's footsteps interrupted the soft humming of early season insects.
It was nice. Peaceful. The sun warmed her skin. The air smelled good. There was no pollution out here. It was quiet and peaceful and serene and Sakura reminded herself that, circumstances aside, anybody would be lucky to -
BOOM.The ground underfoot vibrated with the enormity of the blast. To the south, birds shrieked and scattered, dark ominous shapes in the sky above.
Oh thank god, Sakura thought, and nimbly jumped her own fence to find out what on earth that had been.
That huge sound had not been from far away. The forest was a lot denser than Sakura's own property, with underbrush that had apparently never been cut, and huge gnarled tree roots and a smothering dark canopy above. It still only took her few minutes to find the place where she thought the disturbance had originated. The trees nearby were stripped of their old bark and new leaves, blackened and still smoking in the otherwise cool air. The dirt had been kicked up all over, leaving huge troughs and mounds scattered. of Even some of the rocks looked worse for wear, scorched blackly along their sides.
She inhaled. She could smell the smoke - and not just the smoke of burning wood, either, but something heavier and more acrid. She hoped it wasn't toxic.
"Hello?" she called out, inching forward. She was pretty sure some of that in the dirt was shattered crockery, which seemed really ominous. Had there been a person at the middle of all this?
A branch creaked threateningly overhead. Sakura gingerly stepped back again.
"It's fine!" yelled someone, and then his voice dissolved into a series of breathless coughs that did not strongly support that statement.
Sakura rested one hand on top of an enormous fallen branch - or maybe it was a trunk? - twitched at the surprisingheat radiating from it, and pressed to see if it would hold her. Then, cautiously, she climbed on top of it, avoiding the worst-burnt bits, which still seemed apt to crumble beneath her boots. She jumped down with a thump.
There was, beyond the felled tree, a large and very dirty ditch. The man in it was still coughing.
It didn't sound great.
"Hey, you can hear me, right?" said Sakura, crouching down.
"I said it's fine, yeah," he snapped, and then he coughed again and rolled over with a groan. "Do I even know you?"
"No," Sakura said, "but I'm a doctor." Well. A surgeon. A... suspended surgeon. Maybe an ex-surgeon. It was hardly the time to pick nits about that, though.
"Good for you, lady. I don't need a doctor, I need - to get out - of-"
Awkwardly, Sakura stuck her hand out. With an annoyed grunt the stranger grabbed it. His grip seemed disproportionately strong for his size.
The guy shook off some of the dirt as he stumbled to his feet with the aid of Sakura's hand for balance. Under the trickling dirt it looked like his hair was pale, and the scowling eyes he finally fixed on Sakura were large and surprisingly lucid and bluer than the sky.
"Huh," he said. His scowl fell away. He was, Sakura realised, actually pretty young. Certainly not older than she was.
His hand went lax in hers.
There was a second's pause.
Sakura gently disentangled their fingers, feeling the loose dirt trickle between them.
"Hi," she said into the silence. "I heard the bang, I thought-"
"Yeah," he interrupted, "It's fine. I'm fine. I just didn't expect it to be so big, is all. Is my camera okay?"
"Your... camera?" She glanced around, but did not immediately see a camera. Had he been out here photographing wildlife or something?
He ran one dirty hand through his equally filthy hair. It came away smeared and tacky.
Sakura wondered if it would be too pushy of her to point out that he was bleeding, and that bleeding freely from the head was, you know, usually not a great sign. But then he looked at his hand, clicked his tongue in irritation and summarily ignored it.
He climbed out of his ditch with relative ease and stalked past her, already muttering to himself. He wasn't that much taller than Sakura, which was a relief. After meeting Hashirama and Tobirama this morning, and seeing Kakuzu again, Sakura had been a little worried that she'd stepped into the Land of Improbably Tall Men.
His gait was normal, at least - no stumbling or staggering - and he seemed completely able to hear her clearly. She watched him bend down to fuss with something just outside the circle of worst destruction. Yeah, he could probably decide what to do with his own injuries... even if his decision was stupid. At this point Sakura felt like she knew all about making stupid decisions, so she guessed she wouldn't begrudge him his.
"Where'd you come from? There's not usually anyone out here - else I wouldn't work out here. Phew! It's not broken," he added, spinning around and waving what did indeed look like a camera - a very dirty camera with slightly warped casing.
"The farm," she pointed vaguely north. "I was just trying to get a feel for the boundaries of it, and I heard the bang, so-"
"That farm?" he interrupted her. He stiffened, followed her pointing hand with his eyes, and then returned his focus to the camera and did not look back up at her when he asked: "You're an Uchiha, then?"
Sakura had gone by 'Uchiha' for so long she stalled for a few long seconds, until the silence was actually worse than just saying 'yes' and then correcting herself might have been.
He looked up. Beneath the dirt, his mouth twisted. He raised an eyebrow at her, although it was hard to distinguish amid the dirt on his face. "Was that hard question for you?"
Sakura laughed awkwardly. "I used to be," she said. "I'm still getting the divorce sorted out. Paperwork and... you know."
Looking at him, she'd bet he did not know, actually. He didn't seem like the marrying type. Or the type who, uh, experienced human company very often. But it seemed rude to say so.
"Right. Well. Good riddance to bad shit. Stiff losers with poles up their butts, yeah. Breakups suck, though. Hey, you wanna see some art?"
This man had clearly been raised by wolves. Not very polite ones, either. Rude wolves. Sakura elected, very magnanimously, to give him some leeway for his manners on the basis of being caught in an explosion and dumped in a ditch.
"Pleased to meet you," she said from between her teeth. "What's your name?"
He blinked. "Oh." Then he laughed, a short and startling bark in the still forest. "I'm Deidara. I'm an artist. Here, let me show you-"
He spun his whole body around in a flutter of dirt and fabric so she could see the screen of what turned out to be a pretty fancy looking digital camera, wiped mostly clean on the inside of his collar.
Bemused, and a little charmed by his evident enthusiasm, she looked.
"Oh," she said softly.
The sculpture was of a bird with its wings half stretched - some kind of raptor with a curved beak and fierce talons. It wasn't exactly to her taste, but it was intricate and delicate and she could only begin to contemplate how much time and effort had to go into getting every feather and bone so carefully accurate. It looked like it could take flight at any second.
Sakura didn't know a blessed thing about art but she knew it must have taken a reasonable degree of skill to make something like that.
"You're a sculptor?"
"Sort of. I guess," said Deidara, with almost no interest, and swiped to the next image. And then the next.
Sakura swallowed. The shutter speed had to have been tremendous, because each frame captured was of a different moment, and each one showed the rapid, violent, explosive destruction of the sculpture.
She guessed she knew what kind of crockery had been in the blast now - a pretty, ceramic bird of prey.
Wait. "You blew it up on purpose?"
Deidara looked sideways at her, looking a bit savage and a lot unhinged through all the dirt. "Um, yeah," he said, as though it was obvious and Sakura was the crazy one here.
"Is that, er," she didn't really know anything about art, and now she had no idea what to say about it. What did wild crazy artists in the forest like? Aggressive political polemic..? "Is that a - a statement?"
Deidara blinked. "You don't like it?"
It would definitely be dishonest to say she liked it. Sakura held up both her hands, pasted on a smile and lied: "No, no, of course I like it, it's - it's so unique!"
His eyes narrowed, and his expression went tight. "It's fine if you don't like it. Not everybody likes the same things. The point of art is to make you think and feel things, not to make you comfortable."
He spat 'comfortable' like it was a dirty word.
I am definitely not comfortable, she thought wildly, taking a step back from him. Had she really thought he was short? He seemed to loom more than the trees in his sudden intensity.
Oh no, he was waiting for her to say something.
Gamely, she tried again. "It just seems like a bit of a shame, because, you know, the sculpture is so-"
He interrupted her. Again. "Of course it is!"
She stared him.
He stared back at her with mounting frustration.
"I don't really know anything about art, sorry," Sakura said slowly. She wondered how she was going to extricate herself from this awful conversation, and if it was really okay to be all alone in the middle of the forest with this man.
"Well." He sniffed. His shoulders relaxed. "At least you can admit it, yeah. But you don't have to like it. That's not what it's for."
Sakura sort of wanted to a ask what on earth it was for, in that case, but she also thought she probably didn't want to endure learning about it.
There was a silence.
"It's definitely not like anything else I've seen," she said cautiously.
"There!" He pointed the lopsided camera at her like a weapon, looking absolutely crazed with dirt and soot all over his face and, now, a trickle of blood leaking from his hair onto his forehead. The dirt clumped around it. "That's better."
I, Sakura thought anxiously, have to get out of here right now. She opened her mouth to make an excuse - any excuse would do, the perimeter of her new property certainly wasn't going to discover itself! - but that was when Deidara seemed to notice he was still bleeding from his head.
"Are you really a doctor?" he asked finally, in a much smaller and more vulnerable voice. He looked a little lost, suddenly.
She mentally revised her assessment of his age - lower. Deidara was almost certainly younger than her.
Sakura was silent for a long moment. He did look pretty wretched, but she also had to consider her own comfort and safety. Did she really want to...
Even as she thought this completely pertinent thought, Deidara shook his head and then tried to rub the streak of blood away from his eye with the heel of one dirty hand. Mostly he just smeared it everywhere, and then looked down at his stained hand like it had betrayed him unexpectedly.
...Aw, hell.
