disclaimer: not mine.
dedication: to les, for always staying up with me (and for being my future husband [/wife? Who's the man in this relationship, anyways, les?]. beetch.)
notes: i really enjoy this format. i dunno why.
notes2: i catalogue things too much, and everyone likes to make fun of my OCD. This is Not Cool.
notes3: so. like. i seem to have this thing for Sakura being a hooker. guys, i dunno, either.
notes4: I AM NOT COMING BACK. WTF. (ten bucks says i regress back to hermit status by the end of the month.)
title: amber glances
summary: Somewhere between Sakura and the three-day supply of weed in his back pocket, Sasuke had lost his soul. "I'd die, and kill the whole world, if I had to." — Sasuke/Sakura; o4/5o.
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At fourteen, Sakura didn't remember what it was like to be innocent. All she knew, then, was bruises, and alcohol-induced stupors, and sitting in long, empty hallways wearing little more then a dirty shift, too short, sleeves too long. It was an endless cycle of deprivation, blood, and violence.
That was all Sakura knew, for a long, long time.
At fourteen, Sakura's body belonged less to herself, than the clothes she wore belonged to her.
People passed in and out of her life like leaves caught on the wind, sand slipping through an open hand. That was Sakura's life, with very few exceptions. But once in a while, Sakura would meet someone who actually paid attention to the fact that she had a soul—that she wasn't just something to play with.
That didn't happen too often, though.
At fourteen, Sakura met Uchiha Sasuke.
It was only a passing glance. She was being led to the next room, to do something she would feel dirty about for a week, and he was being led to over-see exactly how this part of the yakuza was run—the part he would inherit, that is.
It was a passing glance. Her eyes met his for barely a quarter of a second.
They both saw something they were not expecting to see. Sakura saw a very lonely teenage boy—he couldn't have been much older then her, maybe a year or two, and what they were prepping him for was not something any one person should see; Sakura knew that, knew it very, very well. Sasuke saw a haughty girl with fire in her exotic green eyes—saw the hatred there, the sickness, and he hated the whole situation, then, as much as she did.
It was just a passing glance.
But it would change both their lives, forever.
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Because then the glances started.
Sakura didn't want to know that coldly beautiful boy; she'd seen a sliver of his soul, a spark, a flash, and she didn't want to see any more.
She knew that if she did, she would do something that was irreversible.
Oh, just like fall in love.
There was only one rule to the world that Sakura lived in (not by choice, never by choice—how could something like being kidnapped be by choice—), and that was that girls like Sakura never fell in love. Taboo, it was so, so taboo, and wrong, and horrible. She knew it was wrong. Wrong, to want to escape something she had never wanted in the first place.
Sometimes, Sakura cursed her strange, foreign colouring. It got her into this.
But maybe it could get her out.
So the glances continued.
He would appear, sometimes, and cast a bored, icy fleeting look about the room, like he was looking for something. Some would say that when he saw the flash of pink that was Sakura's hair, he would tense, if only slightly. Their eyes would meet.
And then he would continue on his way.
She didn't learn that his name was Sasuke until much later; but she did know that he was rich, and obviously important enough to warrant a tour. There weren't that many people that warranted a tour.
Perhaps the yakuza thought that they were secretive, and perhaps they were—but if there was one thing that remained the same, no matter what happened, no matter how much time passed, no matter what era it was; it was that servants talked.
At fourteen, Sakura began to understand why people gossiped.
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Sakura's fifteenth birthday came and passed. No fuss was made, and Sakura was simply allowed a quiet, free night. She cherished it, and stayed away from the long hallways-lit-by-kerosene that housed the other girls.
That was two nights before he asked her for her name.
The other girls tittered—Sakura had grown up with them, under dingy, dirty light bulbs, and it was all she could do not to turn around hiss at them. If she could get out, buy her own goddamn freedom, she would come back, and get them all out of there.
They all knew it, and provided Sakura the perfect cover to murmur "I don't have a name, Sasuke-kun."
The shock that filtered into his eyes provided Sakura a strange sense of satisfaction, and she felt his eyes on her exposed back, her exposed legs—it was a black corset and a white feather boa for clothing and very little else, today.
Sakura shot him a glance over her shoulder through sultry, smoky eyes, and smacked her ass at him, even as she was heading towards another room (if the bastard tonight left bruises, Sakura was just- just- just going to be sick. Too many bruises, too many, too many).
He had no idea what he was getting into.
Until he did, Sakura wasn't going to let him know her name.
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At fifteen, Sakura spat out a glob of blood on the floor, and winced as an old friend tried to make her stop flinching as the girl tended to the violent gashes that lined Sakura's ribs. Blood trickled down pale skin in thin rivulets. Sakura hated the world.
"You have to stop fighting it," the girl murmured tiredly.
Sakura shook her head, her jaw clenched. "Not yet, Ino. He's almost—ow, you whore!—paying attention."
The blonde sat back, and let Sakura alone.
She knew that Sakura wanted to believe that people escaped this place, that freedom was something that actually existed.
But it didn't.
Not in places like this.
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At sixteen, Sasuke asked her for her name a second time.
"You ne'er told me y'ur name…"
He was drunk, decorum gone, dark hair across even darker eyes, sitting on a plush burgundy seat in the middle of a room that Sakura hadn't even known existed. He smelled like fine whiskey, amber liquid sloshing out of a crystal bottle and onto the table. Sakura wrinkled her nose.
"You're drunk, Sasuke-kun," she told him boredly; she studied the hem of her very sheer made-of-frills dress.
"An' you're a ho'ker," he slurred at her.
She slapped him.
Her hand left a welt, raised and red, on the side of his face. She didn't give a damn who he thought he was, then—no one called her a hooker. She wheeled, and strode for the door, shoulder-length bubble-gum hair dancing angrily behind her.
Before her hand was on the knob, the air was knocked out of her lungs, and Sakura found herself pressed against the hard oak of the door, a solid male body behind her. The whiskey on his breath made her shudder in distaste—the customers were usually most violent when that vile drink poisoned their minds, Sakura knew.
His voice had lost all pretence of inebriation. He hissed "Don't ever touch me like that, again."
At sixteen, Sakura looked Sasuke Uchiha in the eye, and told him to "Kiss my ass, Uchiha."
At sixteen, Sakura was kissed on the mouth by a man for the first time without receiving a bruise somewhere on her body, in return.
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Seventeen came and went, and Sakura would find herself staring out the window at the rain, sometimes.
Tokyo was a dreary city, in the fall.
She felt a presence behind her, and she shot a glance back at Sasuke. She had a black eye—Sakura knew he hated this place, what it represented; but she also knew that he hated it more-so because of what it did to her.
She shook, sometimes, to think that he may have ended up just like the others in his family.
"Sakura, stop."
She shook her head, her swollen eye throbbing. No, she wasn't going to stop, not until she watched this place burn to the ground. Sakura knew that things would be better when this whole world burned.
"I can't, Sasuke-kun. You know that. Not yet. You—" she broke off, her voice dying for a moment, before returning, a soft, imploring contralto "—You were willing to listen. The others have to listen, too. I don't want to see Ino with bruises, or Karin looking like a human punching bag, or Hinata so afraid of physical contact that she's never going to recover. I don't want those things, anymore, Sasuke."
She only rarely dropped that damn honorific, Sasuke knew.
So she was serious.
"You will die."
She just stared at him, her gaze level and quiet.
"I know that."
She sat back against the window seat, and moved her legs just enough for him to sit down.
Sasuke took the quietly offered seat.
But that didn't stop him from slipping his hand into his right pocket, and carefully running a finger over the packet that held just a small amount of the newest shipment of marijuana from up north.
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At seventeen, Sakura was nearly killed. It involved the man she had been pleasing, her fist, a staircase, and two chairs. She broke three bones in her hand, a rib, and knocked one of her molars loose.
Sasuke was never informed of the details.
When she woke up in the infirmary, he wasn't there.
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At seventeen, Sakura lay in bed, and waited for the clock to strike midnight. Only a few more hours, and she would be an adult—legally, anyways. She had been an adult, really, since the day she had turned thirteen.
That was a long time ago, now, Sakura thought.
She stared at the ceiling.
It was very quiet in the brothel's communal sleeping area—she could barely hear the combined breathing of her cell-mates.
The door slammed open, and angry red light flooded the safe, private quarters. Shrieks of fear screamed through Sakura's ears, and she was up and out of bed, a knife at whoever was at the door's throat, faster than most could even realized she'd moved.
Sakura was not weak.
But holding a knife to her Sasuke's throat was possibly the scariest thing Sakura had ever forced herself to do.
He stared at her. His gaze was level, and despite the chaos that was the rest of the room, Sakura could hear him perfectly.
"I'll keep you safe. I'd die, and kill the whole world to do it, if I had to. I will not let you die."
Sakura didn't remove the knife from his throat. She stared at him, a casual look of mistrust on her features—love was different then trust. "Really?"
"Yes," he hissed.
He didn't smell like whiskey, for once, Sakura mused, as he shoved a long, thick cloak around her shoulders, and pulled her out into the night. She didn't know where he was leading her.
Sakura almost thought it was okay.
Any place was better then what she was leaving behind.
Any place at all.
Any time, any where. It was better.
It had to be.
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fin.
