6
..
The flesh still burns long after he's stopped calling forth his flames. The scales melt and slide off the skin, falling to the ground with a quiet hiss. There are crackles and pops; the air smells of something charred, roasted. Skin and bones, flesh and blood.
Sasuke walks closer, mildly observing his work, the yellow eyes frozen as they stare off at nothing for all eternity, until the eyes are nothing more.
The beast is huge, thick, splitting up into three heads, all as dead as the last. Massive jaws wide open, slitted tongues curled at the ground.
He nears, observes the fangs.
"What are you doing?" Sai asks as he comes closer, eyes narrowed and hand waving at the air in front of his nose. His eyes are still ink black, helping in making his skin all the paler, all the more translucent.
"Tamers make their weapons out of the bones of the decaying beasts they kill."
"Wha's yer point?" asks Naruto, arms crossed in front of his chest, nose wrinkled and his orange eyes staring the dead serpent down.
"I worked with a Tamer, once. Before this."
"Yeah?" Sai prods, genuinely intrigued.
Ink Bearers, Sasuke thinks with a mental roll of his eye, such selfish hoarders in wanting to know and learn everything. Sai has parted from his people long ago, so he says, but he still seems to share that trait.
"Wha's yer point?" Naruto asks again, turning his slitted eyes towards him.
"Help me pull this out," Sasuke replies, hand reaching and touching the sharp point of the snake's fang.
.
Sakura sits by what used to be their inn. Her back is against some of the rubble; her posture slouched so as not to disturb the medicinal herbs healing her wound.
Plants. Healing.
She'd thought Ino was trying to kill her when she'd demanded Naruto to find her some yarrow and other herbs from the town's outskirts. She hadn't voiced her fears, but her thoughts… Ino had laughed.
Murderous as the plants, like all plants, are, Ino merely has to command them in what to do. It's why she stands by her side now, for her power over them to remain strong, so they can heal her wound without trying to kill her.
Still though, Sakura can feel the harmless nibbles near the tender flesh around her injury. Harmless and more like a caress. Like curiosity at what they can feast upon if not for the Mindwalker controlling them.
Ino hums next to her, the runes on her skin darker now that she is discharging her magic. Her long pale blond hair is dirtied and knotted, scratches and scrapes and bruises lingering on her body. She looks out to the half-ruined town, expression troubled and lips moving with silent words.
"Unbelievable to consider creatures do this to one another," she says, lips pursed.
"You fought. I saw you. You moved with such grace… Like a warrior."
There are no accusations in Sakura's words; just fascination, wonder, the lightness of conversation.
"I am no warrior," Ino replies. "My people mind their own. It was the High Rule after years of using our magic to steal bodies, lives to do our bidding. But. I learnt to fight regardless. I felt like I had to. Learning kept me grounded. Allowed me to feel protected and I was my own protector."
Sakura is quiet after this and the silence that falls around them is restless from her end. She concentrates on the soft nipping of the herbs healing the gash on her side, mind wandering.
The town is loud as it tries to surface above the misfortune it'd so abruptly been dealt with. The sky is angry; restless just as she is and the shades of red mixed with the indigo blue shows it. No stars watch over them tonight.
"Perhaps…" she begins, staring at the townspeople. "Perhaps I should be more like you."
Ino is quick to scoff, hands at her hips. "Do not be ridiculous, seedling. For someone that has been thrust into a land as alive as the creatures it nurtures, you are faring quite well."
All conversation ceases at that moment as Sasuke, Naruto and Sai approach. They walk with distance in between them, heads dipped low or raised high; like men that have seen this time and time again, have been in the heart of chaos one time too many. It is as if death has lost it's magic over them.
"How are you managing?" Sasuke asks, his eye on the ripped side of her blouse. He tilts his head, observing the yarrow so meticulously rubbed and stuck on her skin.
"Well, I suppose," Sakura responds, lowering her stare down to the ground, lashes tickling the skin just below her eye. "I… should thank you—"
"Do not," Sasuke interrupts, hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers. "Consider it a payback for saving me from the Willows."
"Oh…"
Of course, she thinks. Why else would he save a stranger like her? She spares a glance at Ino, convincing herself the woman's slow lower of her head is a distraction, a means to allow her the privacy of her thoughts, her ridiculous feelings.
It's just that… He'd insisted she accompany them. He… He seemed as if he needed her presence there with them. And—and… Perhaps this all really is ridiculous… But should the rescue of her wellbeing really be a mere payback for having done the same two days prior?
Sakura shakes it off and looks up at him with a brief, hesitant smile.
"She will be healed soon," Ino states, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "The wound will be tender, but it should not be surprising."
Sasuke exhales softly and looks up at the sky. "It looks as though it will rain in the upcoming days. We will leave tomorrow afternoon at the latest. A night's rest should help her heal, correct?"
"Certainly," Ino snips, lifting her chin up high.
"We must find who passed the notion of our whereabouts," Sai cuts in, blinking his pure black eyes and letting the ink curl back into his body. He slowly observes them, his expression pausing on Sakura's bewildered expression. Sai smiles at her briefly before saying, "The Seven were here to eliminate us. But their true target was you, Sasuke. It is no coincidence that they knew you were in this town."
"I know who has done the deed," Ino mentions, standing tall, hands curled at her side. "I am insulted such a creature beneath me will even consider to betray me."
"Wha's she talkin' 'bout?" Naruto asks, scratching at the top of his head with a claw.
"Allow me."
Sakura looks up to Ino, her green eye growing wide as Ino gracefully lifts her arms up, her hands connecting by the fingers—thumb pressed against thumb, forefinger against forefinger.
The runes on her skin glow and her pale blue eyes flash white before her body crumbles down like a building, curls into itself, her head against Sakura's arm.
Panic instantly begins to bubble in Sakura's stomach. She shifts a bit, curls an arm around Ino's shoulders as she tries to maintain her breathing. "W-what has happened to her?"
"Relax," Sasuke mentions, turning so he's facing the broken town. "She will return soon."
Sakura is just about to demand answers when she notices someone walking up the street. Through all this, their group has been carefully avoided since the townspeople witnessed Sasuke, Naruto and Sai destroy the giant snake.
They are afraid. Not in the way that Sakura is afraid; not because she does not understand the magnitude of such power, has never witnessed it, has never even considered to be near it. The townspeople are afraid because of such power.
But this woman walks towards them, her strides fast and almost elegant. It would be, but on her it looks awkward. Her straw-colored hair is messy in her hectic walk from wherever she's been hiding to their location and her glasses are broken and crooked on her face.
Sakura gasps. "No…"
"Ah," Sai nods, forefinger and thumb hooked on his chin. "This actually makes a lot of sense."
"Lemme slice her throat," Naruto growls, his blue eyes flashing orange for just a second.
Sasuke is unresponsive as he watches the woman, Shiho, near. His expression is unreadable, carefully cleaned of anything remotely similar to Naruto's fury and Sai's enlightenment.
Sakura bites her lip, sitting up while being careful to mind her wound and the woman she cradles. Ino… she'd mention the unbelievably deep debt Shiho owes her; this woman… she'd loved and taken Ino's promised lover from her.
Lovers in such an intimate definition, they might not have been. But Shikamaru had been… He'd been Ino's future spouse… He died because of her. Ino and he did not get the chance to reconcile as friends, if it's all they'd been destined to be—because of her.
And now she's betrayed Ino.
Anger surges up Sakura's veins. Crackling, like lightning, hot like a summer's sun. She shakes as she tries to contain it all in her weak body, closes her eye as she tries to find a calm in the middle of all the storm inside her.
Betrayal… She cannot stand it. Not when it's been done to someone as loyal and wonderful as Ino. A woman so powerful, with so much insight, so much wise knowledge to share. A woman that has all this and still chose to save a stupid, mediocre girl from the vines, from the Willows and now… from a sword's wound.
But she must remain calm, she coaxes. She knows better than this, knows what the inability to handle her emotions cause. She touches the wraps covering her left eye and exhales from her nose.
There is no point in her anger when she cannot do a thing. Ino… All of them will take care of the traitor.
"I have unraveled her thoughts and her memories and have seen for myself. She is the one that passed the knowledge of our presence in this town."
It is Shiho's voice, lower than Ino's and less smooth and it is Shiho's face attempting to pull Ino's elegant and intimidating expression. But on her, it looks… it looks awkward and wrong.
"Whom is she speaking to?" Sasuke asks, unbothered by how Ino-like this woman is and making it feel so wrong.
"A man," Ino responds, her voice growing softer, slower. "I cannot see who he is, perhaps he hid himself from her view. But his voice…"
"Enough, Mindwalker," Sasuke cuts in. "It is enough with one of us knowing who it is we are to give our regards to. Let us deal with the woman." He crosses his arms in front of his chest, tilts his head. "A clean way—"
"I'll rip her throat—"
"Sai should do it," Sakura says, smiling apologetically at Naruto. They all turn to her and Sakura feels the way her cheeks color, warm up, heat up, scorch up at so much attention on her.
She considers herself to be a tangled up knot, constantly getting close to undoing herself to get to the core of understanding who she is but always jumbling herself just before any success. More often than not, she's angry and afraid for the loss of the person she'd been, yearning for those days and that comfort of knowing to return.
Still, if it is one thing that the tangled mess of who she is knows and is sure of is that she is observant. Sasuke's magic is fire; he is a tornado of flames contained under flesh and skin, sustained by bones. Naruto is a Jinchirūki, half man, half beast. Ino can detach herself from her body and infest and claim a new one if she so chooses, walks and stalks minds and takes the most private of thoughts hostages.
Sai… Is a man of pure poison. Monochrome in the way his skin is parchment-white and his veins black against his translucent skin, like cracks of broken porcelain. His blood is ink; poisoned and highly dangerous, able to kill instantly.
In her battle of slipping and not slipping into darkness after the Seven left, she'd managed to glance—blurry as her vision had been—to see the damage his magic is capable of.
Imagine if… "If Sai carefully injects some of his Ink into her bloodstream, this job can be less messy than the ripping of throats or the engulfment in flames."
"She will still feel pain," Sai explains, "as I inject it."
Sakura inclines her head, lowers her eye to the damaged cobblestone ground. "I assume so but it will last for a briefer moment than all other options."
"Hmm," he hums, black fractures already beginning to split across half of his face, like black lightning, eyes filled to the brim with Ink. "You speak truth."
Her smile is long, crooked, but all more importantly: true. Her comfort in the company she's keeping stretches no further than Ino. What she feels for Sasuke, she thinks, is basic attraction of his physical appearance but beyond that, she is sure, is intimidation and that is something she feels for his own companions.
But this… feels nice. It feels as if Sai, and she hopes, Naruto see her. She is not just a pitiful Untouched, to them. She is… she is a… a… well, a companion.
"Right then, let us begin. Ino…" Sai inclines his head, his dark hair falling over his forehead, over his eyes.
"Right," Ino drawls, Shiho's eyes observing him from over the broken glasses. "She will return to full conscious approximately two minutes after I leave her body. For her treachery, I wish you would wait for her awakening. But. The seedling is right."
Sai nods.
Sakura can't decide where to focus: on Shiho's body, the signs her fingers make, identical to that which Ino had made to leave her body. Or on Sai, who's forefinger begins to drip black ink. Tiny droplets, smaller than a morning's drizzle during the winter.
Still, it is enough to get Sasuke and Naruto to back away from him, cautiously, their eyes looking down at the way the ink burns the cobblestone. It's not even that, Sakura amends, looking at the way any life the cobblestone could possibly have is sucked away, leaving more cracks, dust, holes. Death.
"An Ink Bearer's poison is stronger than any poison concocted by man or creature," Ino gasps as she returns to her body. She lifts her head from Sakura's shoulder, straightens, stands. "It is why…" she says this as she looks at Sai, at the way he lifts his hand, his finger pointing at Shiho's unconscious body. Her voice is softer now, "It is why they cannot reproduce, let alone have relations with any other race but their own."
Sakura opens and closes her mouth, taking this new detail in. No other being can handle the Ink… This man has the ability to kill her by merely placing a kiss on her cheek.
She stares, wild eyed and slightly afraid as Sai manipulates the Ink to turn into a long, solid needle. It travels until it pierces through Shiho's tattered blouse and she convulses; spine arching off the ground, arms twitching.
Her serene expression crumbles and a scream gets caught in her throat, choking her, a fit rumbling from her heaving chest.
Sai's look of disinterest and impassiveness is as intact as when he'd begun.
The others step closer, mindful in not getting too close to the Ink Bearer. Sakura grabs onto Ino's skirt and lightly tugs to get her attention.
"Help me up," she requests. "Please."
Ino observes her for a second before she pulls her to her feet without effort, still careful of her healing wound. She slides Sakura's arm around her shoulders, snakes her own around Sakura's middle.
They are all hovering around Shiho's dying body when she awakens, froth at her mouth and veins like spider-web against her skin, lips blue.
"Hello," Ino greets. "Did you not remember who you served?"
Shiho screams, chokes, convulses. Her back cracks as her spine arches off the ground, knees bent, hips twisting.
"Now you will not be able to forget."
Sai begins to strengthen the amount of Ink he injects into her body, pressing his pale lips together as he wills his blood and magic out and into the wound the Ink has burnt onto Shiho's chest.
"Is this… Is this not suspicious?" Sakura questions, brow furrowing, her compassion steeling as she watches the woman spasm and twist and turn on the ground.
"Ain't no townspeople gonna turn this way," Naruto answers. "Too scared of us. Probably wishin' for the moment we leave. We don't exist to them right now."
"Perhaps they are afraid of the Jinchūriki roaming around," Ino drawls, a playful quirk to her lips.
Naruto blows her a kiss and chuckles but his smile is sharper than his teeth and his look is wild and feral.
"I…" she gasps, tears running down her cheeks, lips blue under the froth bubbling and popping. She chokes, eyes rolling back, glasses slipping off her face. "I did not…. do…. Anything!"
The last word is as much of a scream as she is able to give them.
Sakura tilts her head back, expression unwavering. How dare she lie to a Mindwalker?
.
The Land of Six Paths hums after midnight. The shadows loom, threateningly, waiting, hoping, promising to catch a meal. The trees sway, leaves rustle, branches stretch.
A strong, foul odor of rotten flesh slowly begins to spread as the giant snake decays, crumbling where broken bones can no longer hold up soft meat and skin.
It is cold, foggy, lightly wet. Sasuke exhales smoke, hating such weather, preferring the warm, keeping his heated skin and flesh all the warmer.
He pulls away from his task, running his hands up and down his thighs so the friction can keep his fingers from growing numb.
He stares at what he has just finished making, furrows his brow and leans closer to test the thick leather, finds the tucked and hidden knot and remakes it, tighter. The stark white of the bone glows eerily under the moonlight, shaped into a long, wide axe by Naruto's claws and refined into smoothness by Sai's Ink before sterilized by Sasuke's flames.
The handle has black leather wrapped around it bought in a shop within the town moments after the incident with the innkeeper. The leather wraps as so to make the sharp point of the once-fang blunt. Leather also wraps where the wide blade connects to the handle, keeping bone against bone.
Sasuke lifts it from where it rests over a rock dug into the dirt. He presses his lips together at its weight, wonders if this will be a problem but then amends that there is no such thing as weak in his group.
He slowly begins to walk back to where his companions have camped out. Near the outskirts of the town but not near enough to have trouble with the trees, tucked away behind an old building and huddled close for warmth.
He stops when he sees a figure darkened by the night sky, all traits hidden and swallowed by shadows. But there is a set to their shoulders that have become too familiar.
"Sakura," he says, low and firm. Questioning.
Her eye is wide and the finest shade of green he's ever seen. His dark eye locked with her clear one, he swallows the breath he hadn't realized was caught in his throat. Absurd.
"Sasuke," she exhales, lips in a weak smile, hand against her chest as if to calm her heart. "Apologies. I… cannot sleep."
He observes her for a second before looking out to the ominous darkness of the woods. "You should know better than to wander near the forest."
Sakura presses her lips together, her eye on the axe over his shoulder. "That…"
"It is for you," he states, setting it down on the ground, the bottom of the handle digging into the dirt.
"M-me?" She looks at him with shock, turns back to the axe.
"It has become clear you do not have a weapon. As an Untouched, you do not carry magic either… This…" He clears his throat, nudges her to take a hold of it. "This was carved from the fang of the snake."
"For me." It isn't a question. It is a fact that she states, like finishing the purpose of his words, letting his intentions be as clear as he means for them to be. She touches the handle, fingertips light and curious.
"It is… not poisonous?" she asks, her eyes still trained on the large weapon, her fingers withdrawing a few inches away.
"It can be," Sasuke begins, raising a brow, studying her expression. "But it is not."
Sakura touches the axe again, wraps her thin fingers around the handle. As he lets go and lets the burden of its weight fall to her, he watches if she is able to hold it securely. He furrows his brow when it threatens to overbalance her but relaxes as she stands her ground.
Curious, he thinks. Curious little Untouched.
"Thank you."
He returns his attention to her, his jaw tensing. Sakura looks at him with open sincerity in her expression. She is pale under the moonlight, her pink hair washed of color and her green eye close to silver.
Sasuke… He is stunned for a brief moment, lasting longer than it should because it takes him so long to notice how he's frozen up at being under her undivided attention.
There is the feeling in his chest, sinking to his stomach. It's identical to what he felt when she wished to part ways from their quick and messy team. Less powerful than the acute sensation that had driven him close to anxious as he'd sat in the bar, the establishment rumbling at the impact of the serpent.
This one… this one feels different. Tender, if he's to ever really remember how that is supposed to make him feel. Warm. Like bubbles popping in his stomach because his blood is boiling hotter than normal.
"Sasuke?"
"Yes."
He clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. "Well, then. We should rest. We leave after high noon's aggressive heat."
Sakura lowers her eye, her eyelashes a stark contrast to her skin. She does not respond and they do not move. Sasuke thinks they stay like that for too long but he still doesn't move—does not want to.
There is… there is something he feels in Sakura's company that he does not feel when he is with Naruto or Sai or even the Mindwalker. Something buried deep inside him since the moment his mother and father burnt to death.
Comfort, perhaps. And he does not give himself the chance to see if this is true.
He begins to walk away.
Sakura, he notices, follows.
.
"Mongrel!"
Naruto laughs as he moves to sit in a crouch next to Sakura. He's dripping wet, shaggy blond spikes poofy and fox ears twitching and flapping.
Ino glares at him from where she sits at the base of the trunk of an enormous and thick tree, water dripping from her hair and peppered on her skin like freckles.
Sakura grins, pausing her fixation in studying the thick vine Ino has enchanted to serve as a holster, wrapped around her new axe's handle and then diagonally curling around her chest to secure it in place as they travel.
She gasps, soft and surprised as she turns to Naruto, catching the mischievous wag of a foxtail. In their time together, short as it's been, she has never seen it even once. But there he is, crouching next to her, his clothes sticking to his body, hair wild and wet and his foxtail waggling behind him, orange and bright.
"You have a tail!" She reaches and touches it, dragging her palm down the length of it and curling the floofy white tip around her finger.
Naruto emits something like a purr and a growl, digging his claws into the dirt and shuddering.
"I keep it under my coat," he rasps, snatching it back from her touch and dropping it onto his lap. "It grabs attention."
"It is gorgeous," Sakura compliments.
"Well, I'm a gorgeous fox," Naruto replies, waggling his eyebrows at her, sharp teeth out in a wide grin.
Ino snorts.
"Do not flatter yourself so much, beast," she says, grimacing at a wet strand of hair.
"Someone's gotta do it! I ain't seen no foxy lady in days—weeks!" He turns to Sakura, winks a big blue eye and adds, "Sakura's a beaut but you smell funny."
"Pardon?!" Sakura's cheeks grow hot, eye wide.
"Not like that… s'just…. Your scent's sorta familiar. Can't really tell why but that usually means you got—"
"Why are you wet, mongrel?" Ino intervenes, rolling her pupiless eyes.
"Fishin'," Naruto replies. "Good catch."
"And where are these fishes?" Sakura asks, cautiously digging her nose into the collar of her shirt and inhaling.
"Sasuke's got 'em." Naruto shoves a clawed thumb in the air, behind his shoulder. "I would'a ate 'em."
"Raw?"
"…Heh…"
After a second, Naruto's eyes open up wide as if realization has sparked inside him. He scurries away, bent in a way that has him running with both his legs and hands, as if he were truly a fox.
They have been traveling for five days now, covering as much ground as possible during the day and enchanting the trees at night, keeping watch as the shadows creep and lurk and hunger to cross Sai's poisoned lines but entirely unable.
During this time, she's watched her companions; Naruto skips ahead of them, jumping from thick branch to thick branch before the trees can even think about snatching him up. He returns, sometimes running on all fours, sometimes jumping back the way he went.
Ino keeps to the back, her eyes observing the greenery, daring it to try and move closer.
Sasuke moves with resolution. His lean frame stiff and straight, his eye on the distance, his mouth set into a frown. He walks with Sai, both sometimes murmuring to each other but oftentimes remaining quiet.
They are a mixed combination, she thinks… But they've blended. They've made this work and Sakura thinks she's glad Sasuke kept her from leaving, that night in front of Ino's burnt hut.
Sakura subconsciously moves to caress her axe again at the mere thought of his name. She stares at the weapon without really seeing, fingers the blade, a curve to her lips and heat on her cheekbones.
"Do you know how to use it?" Ino asks, cutting into her thoughts and willing her back to the present.
Sakura pulls away and turns to her friend, blinking her green eyes in confusion. Ino tilts her head, her lips twitching into a smirk, eyes slowly turning to the side before returning to her.
"The axe, seedling. Do you know how to use it?"
"Well… no," Sakura confesses, biting at her lower lip and staring at the softly swaying grass. "I assumed that in a fight I would—"
"Get yourself killed." Ino furrows her brow. "May I?" she asks, her hands rising up, fingers laced in the way they'd been when she transferred her being into Shiho.
Sakura tenses, feels her heartbeat vibrate and pulse in her temple. It s not fear she feels, she decides. At least, not towards Ino. She feels unsure at the action. Curious of the unknown just as much as it terrifies her in any other circumstance.
Will she feel Ino's presence inside her? Will they be able to speak within her head, like two consciences inside one single person?
At her hesitation, Ino begins to lower her hands, cheeks pink as if she has realized what she has asked.
"Pardon," she mutters, turning away, both ignoring Naruto as he comes and goes with twigs and branches for a fire.
"Wait…" Sakura exhales through her parted lips, soft and quiet. "I trust you. I was just… wondering—"
"I will filter my knowledge, brief as it is, of how to use such a weapon. It will… imprint, let's say, into your thoughts. Muscle memory. As if you have always known."
"That… That can be done?"
Ino grins at her, looking younger and mischievous, as if her porcelain, immaculate appearance preserves that well enough to make it disappear. Then, she lifts her hands up again and Sakura's thoughts are no longer hers.
.
The rain has stopped, at least for now. Despite this, the sky remains gray and cloudy, fog thin as it curls around the hips, like a slithering snake.
It is cold and Sasuke feels weak despite himself. A white puff appears in front of his face with every exhale and his skin has turned lukewarm when so normally he is scorching hot to the touch.
He walks back into their makeshift camp with Sai at his side, both watching the trees, the small shadows that appear early at this hour as the sun continues to be blocked by rain clouds.
In his hand, resting against his shoulder, he carries a thin but sturdy branch, holding the fishes Naruto's caught. He mildly wonders if the mongrel has readied a spot for him to start a fire.
This is when the camp itself comes into view, with it, the rest of his group. Naruto has, in fact, built a fire to be set aflame but it goes on unnoticed to Sasuke as he abruptly stops and stares at Sakura.
She stands to one side, crouched in a battle stance with her hands on the axe's handle. His keen eye observes the motion, the positions—she's gripped it so that she can easily drop her second hand as the first, holding the majority weight of the axe, curves into a swinging attack.
He, subconsciously as it is, unabashedly stares at the slight swell of muscle at her movement. Forgets to blink as she drops back into a stance.
"Well…" Sai murmurs but Sasuke briefly turns his attention to Ino as she inhales and reanimates, blinking her eyes.
Sasuke turns back to Sakura, the twist to her upper body, the swing of her axe.
Most facts about the Untouched go by without a second thought from the magic bearers. The most that is talked about is of their slow aging, their long lasting lives.
No one speaks about their immense strength, able to carry, hold, propel and wrench things even the strongest creature of these lands can't fathom to.
Strength that, perhaps, rivaled that of the giants. But the giants have gone entirely extinct.
Sakura laughs as she stops her training, drops her stance and her axe and begins to turn round. She pauses when she catches him, her green eye wide and her smile faltering, twitching to remain in place.
Sasuke feels the burning hot return to the tips of his ears for a fleeting moment. He looks away, lifting his unoccupied hand to run his fingers through his hair, adjust his black eye-patch—anything.
"When," she begins and Sasuke, like the others, turns his attention to her. She's lifted the axe off the ground again, holding it as if it were a sword, pointing the very edge of the weapon in his direction like pointing a finger. "When the Seven attack once more, I will… I will not need saving."
His lips twitch, a crooked smirk stretching across his face as he scoffs and moves further into the camp. "So it seems."
There is still hesitance in her words, in her every action. What is it, he wonders, that's cornered her into a shell? A prisoner in her own body.
"Fish need scalin'," Naruto says, snatching the branch from his grip.
"If you—"
"I ain't gonna eat 'em!" Naruto shoves his chin in the air. "Ladies are present."
Sasuke snorts, turns back to Sakura. She's carefully set the axe against a tree, letting the enchanted vine wrap around the handle. She turns away but not in his direction.
He watches her walk towards the Mindwalker, lower his eyelash as thoughts from the attack filter back in. If he were alone, he'd press his palm to his chest where he'd felt a burn like no other.
Sharp and dull. His heart tightening, wrenching.
Sasuke looks at Sakura one last time before he moves to help Naruto with the fish.
.
"—An' that's when I realized."
"Realized what?" Sakura asks, her eye wide, fingers still picking at the bits of meat in between the fish's bone.
"She wanted m'tail," Naruto stresses, his blue eyes on her. Bits of fish meat pepper his cheeks but he does nothing to clean it, rather, he sucks at one of his claws. "Then, Sai over here, the traitor, devised a plan and I was the bait."
"You are always the bait," says Sasuke, rolling his eye.
"Well I ain't like it! I need'a feel sure an' protected! Not… not shoved into the dragon's mouth—which has happened!"
"It has not," Sai scoffs. "We have not been to the far north where the Dragons dwell, you fibber."
Naruto huffs.
"So a couple of golden suns and silvered moons is worth putting your lives at risk?" Ino asks, tilting her head and looking at them from under her dirty blond lashes.
"Do not look down on us commoners, Mindwalker," Sasuke sneers but he keeps his eye on the fire, small and feeble as it is with this weather. "We must earn a living; it is something that, perhaps, you have lost touch with in your hut and forest."
"Hmm." Ino smiles, head inclined. "My hut and forest that have burnt down, you mean, Fire Breather?"
"Exactly so."
"I have a question," Sakura intervenes, turning her bright green eye from Sasuke to Ino and back. She makes to set her meal down but then pauses, considers, and offers it to Naruto's awaiting hands. "Th-the green… The forests. The plants. The grass… The shadows… everything... Why does it try to kill and eat… people?"
All four of her companions stare at her. They are not looks filled with accusation or pity at her lack of understanding the Land of Six Paths. No race really mingles with one another, at least, not when it comes down to the Untouched. They keep to their archipelago, never traveling to their neighboring continent.
"Because," Ino begins, "When the sorcerers Indra and Ashura fought and destroyed one another, their bodies did not hold their magic any longer. It spread through the lands, sucked into the ground where it rooted itself in the growing plants and trees."
Yes, Sakura remembers the story Ino told her, right before the start of this quest. She didn't consider that the magic of the two brothers brought trees to life, grass to attempt to keep you in place…
Perhaps that which should not be alive, lives with darkness in their intentions.
"Trees don't eat people where you're from, Sak'ra?" Naruto asks, a piece of fishbone in between his sharp teeth.
"Trees do not live in Uzushiogakure," Sakura tells them. "They grow tall—taller than even these trees here. But they do not live."
"Sounds weird," Naruto says, his nose scrunched up.
This makes Sakura laugh. Of course something as normal as the lack of living trees will sound weird! Of all things!
The mere thought of home makes her heart pang with sorrow. She's been so invested in the here, in the present, with these new and peculiar people that she has forgotten of her own.
The ones she has forsaken.
Sakura's smile sobers up and she lowers her attention to the ground. The others continue to taunt one another and Naruto yearns for a tankard of lager one time too many.
Abruptly, she stands up, paying no mind to the way the conversation of her companions has stopped, all eyes on her. She closes her own and shakes her head, trying for a smile but working up a grimace instead.
"Pardon," she whispers. "I think… I need a bit of space. I will return—"
She does not finish her sentence, merely whirls around and scurries off, ignoring the others. Ignoring Ino. Ignoring Sasuke.
She only slows down when she's sure she's put enough distance between herself and the camp. She has to concentrate and thank the gray day's minor lighting for helping in catching the Ink Sai has spread on the ground.
Had she stepped over it… She thinks of Shiho's corpse and shudders.
One thought over the other filters in her mind, each one much more heavy and negative than the last. There is a hurricane of anger inside her; a fragile encase of self-loathing and pity. Fear, but fear isn't new at all.
How dare she consider moving on after what she's done? Enjoying her company, concentrating on a quest that has nothing to do with her.
What about all those that she's gotten killed? Burnt by the Black Flames…
Sakura pauses her thoughts, her arms crossed in her attempts to hug herself. The Black Flames… Sasuke is after it too, is he not? Or at least he has some business with it… He probably wishes to meet with the summoner of the Flames that have destroyed the villages.
Her.
Except she feels like an usurper. These powers cannot possibly be hers—if Black Flames have any relation to the Fire Breathers… She should not be able to summon them. She does not want to summon them.
Still, she can't… She can't tell Sasuke.
He'll demand answers she does not have.
This is all an enormous mist—
Sakura gasps as something wraps around her elbow, her eye growing wide and fear, like adrenaline, shoots up and down her veins.
"Do not," she hears, near her ear, "wander into the woods."
"Sasuke," she breathes, her shoulders relaxing. To her horror, she almost melts in his touch. He loosens his grip enough to allow her to turn around. She does and she almost freezes again at his close proximity. "Pardon, I…"
"Is something wrong, Untouched?" he asks, letting go of her elbow and taking a step back. She already misses his warmth, weak as it is under the cold and foggy weather.
Sakura sighs and closes her eye, looks away and subconsciously rubs where he'd touched her. "Speaking of home made me homesick."
Sasuke does not say a thing, as if waiting for anything else she might say. She bites the inside of her cheek, angry at the hot tears that sting her eye. She wills them away.
"B-but… I cannot go back…" Her voice cracks and she purses her lips. She takes a shaky breath and looks at him. "I cannot go back no matter how much I wish it."
"Why not?" he asks, voice low, tone smooth and like something soft.
"Because there is nothing to go back to… It… It is gone. Uzushiogakure is gone. Everyone... my family, my friends… they are all dead."
Despite herself, despite the space she knows there should be between them, she free falls forward, arms wrapping around his middle and her cheek pressed against his chest, the leather harness digging into her cheekbone.
Sasuke is frozen in her arms and Sakura does not cry. But there is an overwhelming feeling inside her, ready to burst.
The Black Flames.
The murders she has unwillingly committed.
Sasuke.
How fast and how deep he's clouded her heart. His words, how he appears, how he feels far gentler towards her than he is to the others, than he is to the world in its entirety. The axe he's crafted with her in mind.
His presence right here, right now.
Sakura digs her nails into his thin shirt, into his skin. She feels his movements, the heavy placement of his hand to the back of her head. Sakura digs her nails deeper.
.
The Snake people do not exist.
Technically speaking.
The cult was eradicated years ago, the founder, his teacher, Orochimaru, sacrificing his Serpent soul to their god.
Kabuto is the only Snake worshipper alive; if living in seclusion, in the background, hidden, can even be considered living.
His people were taken out by the Fire Breathers, before their timely end. Burnt where those of the Snake. The Black Flames Orochimaru had so obsessively sought out. The Flames that he assured his followers were needed to convert, be one with their Serpent god. For only these flames were strong enough to burn their fake skin and allow their white scales to grow in its place.
So much for that.
Now Kabuto researches that what his teacher worked on behind the scenes. Immortality. The ability to have all magic. Fire. Ink. The brute strength of the Tamers. The ability to own bodies like the Mindwalkers.
Anything.
Everything.
Yet here he is now, receiving fools returning from a failed mission. A mission that is not any of his business but forced upon him by a being far greater than him. For now.
The man with the red eyes. He has a slithering suspicion of his identity but not much is known about this man to confirm his guess.
Still, Kabuto is no fool and he will oblige him for now until he's learnt enough, until he's gathered enough resources for his goal.
This, unfortunately, includes dealing with the Seven.
A band of mercenaries ready to kill without question so long as there is golden suns and silver moons to be paid with. A witch, a giant and a pair of white demons. Men from the far west, bred to kill and have no second thought about it.
Ruthless bunch… Yet they can't seem to get the job done, easy as it is. Honestly! How hard can it be to kill a couple of no names?
Kabuto smiles at them, fake from corner to corner.
"You lot seem to have returned quite early," he mocks, lifting a hand up to adjust his glasses. "I trust you have taken care of your job?"
"No," Mangetsu answers, hands at his hips and his massive sword still strapped to his back. "We have not. I am sure you already know that so quit the formalities."
Kabuto's smile is thin and wide, like a snake's.
"The Fire Breather was there," Karin explains. "He is far stronger than anticipated."
Suigetsu snorts, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting his and his sword's weight to one leg. "You only say that 'cause you fought 'im, Karin. You ain't that strong."
"Hm," Karin hums, fluttering her red lashes. "I remember you saying something entirely different. Do you remember? I can describe it to you, if you would like."
Suigetsu scoffs and looks away.
Kabuto watches the interaction, turning to look out the window every so often. Unlike his other little home, this one has a window. Even if the window is there for lack of dried and dead tree bark to put up for a wall.
The difficulties to live out in the forests, risking death by roots digging into his flesh, plants constricting his limbs. He sighs.
"The man will return any day now, you know," he tells them. "Something tells me he has set upon me the job to get rid of those he does not need. I have unloaded this on you. It is what I am paying you for."
"Where's th' advance?" Suigetsu asks, his pale lips in a wide, crooked smirk, sharp teeth out and gleaming. He outstretches an awaiting hand and Kabuto stares at it.
Rolling his gray eyes, he produces a small bag made of burlap and tosses it at them. "Now get out of my sight and do not return until the job is done."
Suigetsu snickers, already turning around to lead the others out.
"Ah," Kabuto calls them. He leans back in his seat, stares at them. He does honestly wonder how he's gotten himself into this mess. "The man with red eyes used the term 'Little Flame'… See if that does any wonder to the Fire Breather. As the strongest and the main target, you should aim to incapacitate him first."
When they leave, Kabuto smiles.
.
Their destination is a land of ashes. It smells of burning, like a fire has started and has not stopped in days, in weeks. In years. The land spreads before them is barren, houses thickly coated in moss and vine, engawas cracked and broken, falling into themselves and leaving splinters and broken rooftops in their place.
The ground is burnt, colored black and white from the unforgiving fire that once set havoc and the soot that has come to rest with the dead.
Sakura watches as Sasuke slowly moves deeper into the village, his back straight, shoulders rigid.
This… Was this his home?
Sai and Naruto flank him, both uncharacteristically quiet. Even Ino mentions not a word as she moves; her head dipped low and her hair shielding her grim expression.
How long has it been since he's left this place?
What tortured thoughts run through his mind as he walks further in, unknowing if he's stepped upon a dead family or friend, what the fire left behind eaten by time.
Sakura feels a restlessness inside her and she wishes to claw her chest open to let it out.
They do not stop until they go up a small swell in the ground, like a soft, small little hill with a large, expansive old-fashioned house that, once upon a time, was beautiful.
Sasuke freezes at the foot of the small hill and he stares, with an unreadable expression, his messy hair damp from the gray weather. But Sakura knows a look like that. It is one that she knows she wears when she thinks of home. When thoughts of Mother and Father and Lady Tsunade and the Slugs come filtering in without any obstacle to distract her.
That is a look of the rawest form of sorrow, of yearning, of uselessness.
It drizzles and none of them make a move to follow when Sasuke walks up the walkway, up the creaky and unstable engawa and stops right at the broken, sliding doors.
This… this was his house.
He lived here.
Sasuke… he played here. Grew here.
This is what was taken from him and this is all that is left. All that was given back.
Sakura lowers her head and hugs herself.
They all mourn what they did not know and did not have a tie to. But they mourn because a death is a death and respect is all that can be given to the dead.
It is here, in their distraction, in the turmoil that forms around them like the eye of the storm, that it happens.
In a blink of an eye, days and weeks after the attack in the village where Shiho betrayed them. Here, in the quiet, dead home of the Fire Breathers that are no more. Here, where Sasuke is at his most vulnerable.
Here, where there is nothing any longer yet so much for him to lose.
"Little Flame, Little Flame," someone sings. "Come out, come out wherever you are!"
There is a new kind of stiffness to Sasuke's body. Stuck like glue where he stands and only drops to his knees by the immense confusion and the trick of emotion that something's triggered in him.
Sakura reaches a hand towards him, as if that alone can shield him as the earth rumbles and the orange-haired giant from days and nights before drops down in the space between them and Sasuke's home.
She screams his name.
..
notes: you would think that with these daily updates i was pumping them out as they were posted. nay, these were all written from july up to late october and posted on my tumblr. cross-posting them here in hopes to get inspiration to finish when i'm already so close. in other words, this is the last fully written chapter. the other one is not even halfway, despite its massive amount of word count. so. here's to hoping i get my ass to it.