A/N; Well I'm not sorry for it being sort of late. I wanted it to be at least half-way good before I dished it out here,
And Zomg, I have reviewers!
O_O
Wow, I'm so glad people like it! It makes me feel so good inside X']
Now If only I can make longer chapters...
Well, Enjoy!
I am Memories Faded, I have a laptop and only need to leave my room when I have to pee and I do not own Naruto.
Chapter Two
Belittle
-verb
[bi-lit-l]
to regard or portray as less impressive or important than appearances indicate; depreciate; disparage.
to represent or speak of as contemptibly small or unimportant.
She came to visit him the next week. By then most of his injuries were healing well enough on their own.
His bright eyes narrowed on her from where he sat on his stained, lumpy looking bed against the far wall as she entered his room. He looked much cleaner, but still far from presentable.
"What the hell do you want?"
She ignored his rudeness, she had a job to do. There really was no point in arguing especially since neither had ever given the other a proper introduction to begin with. "I'm Sakura, I'll be..."
He narrowed his eyes. "We've met before and I don't care who you are. What do you want?" he repeated.
Sakura felt her eyebrow twitch. His demeanor sure had taken a huge turn since their last meeting. She wondered just how bad the interrogation must have gone for him to be this much of an ass. Which had already been bad enough before.
For a moment their eyes met and they simply stared at each other. Motionless, completely frozen in place, the sounds of their breathing the only noise in the small room.
Minutes passed and they did not look away. They had locked themselves without any reason into a staring contest. And neither was going to give in to the silent battle of wills. Sakura's eyes started watering, she blinked but refused to break the immature little game she was holding with him. He grinned at her and licked his cracked lips, almost, but not quite bringing her focus away from his eyes and on to his sharp white teeth.
Apparently his earlier hostility towards her had vanished as soon as he realized he had someone to irritate.
It didn't take long after that for Sakura to decide how truly immature she was acting by playing these childish games with him. She closed her eyes, fingers itching to rub at her temples as a headache started to form. When she looked back at him he was reclining back on the mattress, looking slightly dissatisfied. One arm tucked under his head and the other rubbing over his abdomen.
She had to struggle to look away from the pale stomach muscles flexing beneath his shirt. And decided to cut right to the chase.
"I want information."
He sneered without even looking at her. Without bothering to look up he replied a very simple "No."
She scowled at him. "That wasn't a question."
He shrugged. "I don't see what I have to gain from telling you anything."
"I'm sure we could work something out for you." She insisted.
He laughed dryly. "Right, because I'm currently the prisoner of the village of kittens and rainbows, and you're just gonna let me go after everything is all over, right?"
Her eyes narrowed sharply on him at his sarcasm. Her fingers suddenly began to itch to punch him again instead...
"I've just been interrogated for only you know how long. It's obvious by now you can't kill me, or else you would have done it by now. But you're also too afraid to do anything that could cause real harm. "
'Brilliant deduction.' She grumbled inwardly. "Do you really think that we won't kill you eventually anyways?"
He threw his head back and gave a hearty laugh. "You guys? The Leaf ninja? Oh please!"
His laughter was cut short as Sakura's fist unexpectedly buried itself in the wall behind his head before she could stop herself. He looked genuinely startled for a moment. But then he grinned at her in sadistic satisfaction.
'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! NOW look what you did!' She ranted even as her inner-self cackled in glee.
Sakura stood up to leave, intent on getting herself out before she messed anything else up. It was bad enough now, she'd never, ever forgive herself if their closest chance to finding Sasuke was ruined because of her. Suigetsu watched carefully as she pulled the undamaged fist out of the wall and backed away from him.
She made it about halfway to the door when she heard his mocking voice calling after her.
"So, if I misbehave again are you going to punish me?"
She turned halfway to look back at him. Not at all serious when she spoke back.
"Maybe."
Every day after that manifested into a sadistic ritual. And Suigetsu was pulling all the strings.
She would wake up, go through her morning routine, stop at the hospital and sometimes then Tsunade's office- but not allowed to go on any real missions until 'the captive' told her anything useful. Spend time with friends, train. Though at the end of every day she would come back to his small cell and be forced to deal through whatever abuse he spent his whole cooking up for her.
He was horrible, absolutely awful to her. Stabbing wherever he thought her weaknesses were. It didn't help that she was already the type of person who was ruled by her emotions in the first place. And it really didn't help that he was so damn perceptive about it. He found everything so easily she might as well have handed him a book on how to verbally assault her and tell him to have at it. 'Yes, go right on ahead and take notes while you rot in your cell all day. It's not like I already have self-esteem issues or anything.'
He insulted her, her ninja skills and her lack of strength. Especially her lack of strength, that if she was really strong enough she'd have brought Sasuke back already. So it was indirectly her fault that he was in Konoha to begin with.
Every now and then, if he was feeling more snippy than usual he would start attacking the way she had her hair and even the style of her clothes. Elaborating and continuing until she began to counter his attacks with ones of her own after all her patience and self-control eventually collapsed on itself. At first he was surprised, but he recovered quickly. His sharkish grin widened and his eyes danced with some malicious glee.
Insults meant absolutely nothing to him. That was likely due to the fact that Sakura knew almost nothing about him. Even so, she wasn't naturally the type who tried bring people down on purpose if she wasn't already angry. It was painfully obvious in just the lack of strength in her convictions that she had nothing to fight back with. He was such an enigma, but it was so apparent that he wanted her to push back.
And so the game began.
She relented only once afterward, for which he responded by attacking her full force for her cowardice. Now they were playing for keeps.
He seemed to be out for her sanity.
She wanted to break him, break his control and all his emotional barriers until he gave in and gave her what she wanted.
Information. Information about Sasuke.
She had to win, she had to. It could be the only way for them to get Sasuke back. And there wasn't anyone else who could take her place.
But a lot of things that developed between them were left unspoken.
A polite, forced smile would be rewarded by a ruthless grin and a flash of sharp teeth. A question answered with a sarcastic retort. It seemed after a while they got used to each other, and his avoidance of questions started to piss her off less, and appear more like a challenge, and Sakura Haruno loved a good challenge.
But this challenge was too difficult to face without some kind of help or background information
His description in the bingo book covered the basics, but it gave no leads on any weaknesses for interrogation to work on. He was a former Mist-nin, his village probably had tons of information about him. But Leaf and Mist were currently on shaky ground at best. And that was excluding the fact that Mist had already made an alliance with Akatsuki. It was more than ridiculous to eventhink to request for his files.
He was constantly in a state of dehydration. Tsunade told her that it was because they could not risk him using his abilities to escape. Apparently he could liquefy any part of his body at will when in proper condition, meaning when he was properly hydrated. It was something that Sakura had not yet seen, but would like to. She wondered if it was some type of bloodline limit, or just a very complicated forbidden jutsu.
The curious medic in her couldn't help but wonder just how his body functioned when he was in liquid form. Was it painful? How did his internal organs still function? Was he able to breathe? How long could he stay in that form? How long had he been able to do it in his lifetime?
The day he went into shock however, stunned the living hell out of her.
She had noticed how that day he looked a bit worse than he usually did. His pupils were dilated, and he had a hard time staying focused on trivial things. Which was very unusual. Because normally he would have a whole internal script to run by.
He hadn't been wearing handcuffs for a little over a week, but some kind of invisible force held his hands down as face-first, he toppled forward from his mattress onto the cement floor.
She was frozen in shock for maybe ten seconds, it seemed more than likely that he was playing a trick on her, because it had seemed impossible for him, who was strong enough to bite her after being beaten and almost completely drained of chakra, to pass out cold on the floor at random. So when he didn't show any signs of movement she knew that obviously something wasvery wrong. The medic-nin in her kicked in and she reacted as calmly as she could in the situation, which was to check on him first and then press the alarm button. Though it probably wasn't needed, she was one of the best medics in the entire country.
His skin was extremely clammy, his respiration was shallow, but the most frightening thing was his weak, thready and rapid pulse; probably due to decreased blood flow. Her eyes widened, just how long had they known about this? They had to have known, he probably would've passed out before. Were the AMBU keeping guard completely ignoring him?
He was severely dehydrated. If he didn't get some fluids into him now, he wasn't going to make it. She pressed the button, and yelled at them to get water now.
In ten minutes it was all over. But to Sakura, it felt like only a few, and even after it was over she still hadn't overcome her own sense of shock. Everything was over way too quickly for it to be rational. She, needed to sit down, now, or she might lose feeling in her legs.
Suigetsu's breathing was still shallow, his eyes were half closed and covered by dark shadows. He looked like he was missing something.
"Are you going to be okay?" She asked in genuine concern. He was conscious and staring up at the ceiling, at the sound of her question he turned and stared at her coldly, but at the same time not really looking at her. More like looking through her. Sakura wondered if this was what he was really like when he showed his emotions or felt vulnerable.
"Get out."
She didn't bother to argue at the finality of his voice, but for some reason- one of those strange reasons that seem to keep happening to her, she felt the need to turn and look back at him. Both pairs of eyes met, he had probably only been watching her leave. Though, for the first time truly since their childish staring contest, she really looked at him, and she found that his eyes weren't such cruel, mocking eyes after all. But just as quickly as it came it disappeared. He looked back up, averting her gaze, and no doubt dismissing it.
She blinked at him and closed the door behind her as she left.
"Not Sasuke." She reminded herself once again. "This is not Sasuke."
...
It took a whole night of pondering. From when she walked home all the way to when she came to the Hokage building the next day. She was filled with indecision, but an overwhelming feeling of guilt at what had happened to him made her mind up for her at the last minute. She knew what really should be done. And at the end of the next day without Tsunade's knowledge she slipped extra water into his cell.
It was a good thing she had too. Because the next day, whether by choice of gratitude or just on a whim, he decided to begin to talk.
A/N; It's not, really a cliffhanger, not really. More like something to look forward to in the next chapter? Don't hate me!
I'm planning on starting up another story, which might be updated more than this one until I start coming up with better ideas. Sorry.
But have no fear! For this WILL NOT be discontinued! X3
