Special thanks to DreamingCynic for the title to this chapter, and extra special super duper thanks to my awesome fantastical beta, Uchiha.S.
And thanks to you, dearest readers! I love your reviews, they really make me smile:)
If you like zombies—and I know I do—check out my latest fic called "Zombie Plague," a romantic comedy staring Shikamaru and Temari. It's up at:
www. fanfiction s/7820420/1/
(minus the annoying spaces of doom)
Enough shameless self-plugging, on with the story!
Chapter 10: Second Thoughts, or Team Stalker vrs Team Stalked
This is it—Naruto can feel Sasuke's chakra pulsing just ahead of them. He spares a glance for Sakura, her lips pressed and white around the edges, her eyes bleary but determined. After three days of floundering before finally picking up the trail, then another twenty-four hours rushing after the running ninja, Naruto and Sakura are closing in at long last.
The chase brought them out of the Fire Country and up onto the split border between Hot Springs and Rice Country. Their quarry is zig-zagging over the hilly border. Just when Naruto and Sakura had chased them up a hill and were cresting the final ridge was when Sasuke and Hinata dove back down into the valley. And when they closed in on them in the valley, their prey would rush back into the hills. It was an exhausting strategy, and Naruto's only consolation was that the two they were chasing must be as exhausted as their pursuers.
It does not matter: soon, they will have Sasuke.
Naruto intends to beat the shit out of him, then beg him for forgiveness, and then drag the bastard home. It seems like a good game plan, and Sakura agrees. He's promised to let her get a few good hits in on Sasuke too, which makes Naruto feel magnanimous—because after all, Sasuke belongs to both of them, doesn't he?
Naruto is broken out of his thoughts by a swerving of the chakra in front of them. "Shit! They're veering into Rice again!"
Sakura grimaces. "I was afraid of this—they must be heading for an old hideout in Otogakure. Sasuke knows this terrain better than we do, Naruto-kun. Let's hurry!"
They tear down the mountainside, heedless of brambles ripping at their clothes and skin. The glint of the setting sun blinds them as they speed westward; a branch smacks Naruto's orange-rimmed eyes, but he pays it no mind. He simply closes his eyes and allows nature charka to flow through him, flow between him and Sasuke—until there is only Sasuke, swimming in his vision like a memory burned onto his cornea, an idol eternally established in the temple of his blue-tiled irises. There is only Sasuke; there is no room for anything else.
The muscles in his legs burn with exhaustion but he does not feel them, only feeds them more chakra, more more more chakra, until he pulls ahead of Sakura, practically flying out of the forest and onto the hard, rocky soil. His feet slap the ground, but he ignores the jarring pain that accompanies each shuddering footfall—because there, there is Sasuke's broad form and Hinata's smaller one, bobbing up and down just out of reach like a double image. He sees them run into an ancient, abandoned building.
"Shit," Naruto swears, coming to a halt outside the dilapidated warehouse. When Sakura finally catches up to him, cheeks flushed and lungs heaving, he nods with his head towards the structure. "They're in there."
Sakura cracks her knuckles. "Not for long." She steps forward with deliberate strides, and Naruto can feel her gathering the chakra into her hands. She raises an angry fist up to the sky, shining with blue chakra. Her hand hovers for a moment; then, without warning, she slams it down. There is a great groaning of earth; the ground shudders like a dying animal, and a fissure opens up between her fist and the hideout.
Walls tremble before collapsing, glass shatters and rings as it hits the rocky soil; the whole structure moans before crumbling like dry bread. A cloud of dust mushrooms from the wreckage. For a few, heart-wrenching moments, Naruto can't see, there is no Sasuke in sight—Sasuke who was dead, Sasuke who is alive, Sasuke who is his and theirs and how dare Hinata—
Panicked, Naruto cries, "Sasuke! Sasukeeeeeeeeee! Sasuke, come out and fight me, you bastard! You fucking bastard! I haven't given up on you, Sasukeee!"
And Sakura's voice joins his, hysterical, "Sasuke? Sasuke, please, we're your friends! Sasuke, I—we—still love you, I—we—still need you, Sasukeeeeeeee!" They cry like two lost children for their mother, exhaustion overriding their nerves, their emotions raw, all stealth and ninja training forgotten in this shared, familial pain—how could you leave us Sasuke? You were everything, you are everything, you are the ends and the means, the missing piece of ourselves, Sasukeeeeeeee—
At long last the dust clears, revealing two lone, dark-haired shinobi standing over the flattened debris. A breeze blows, and two heads of long, dark hair flow in the air like black streamers; twin sets of eyes, one bottomless black and one seamless white, regard them.
"I'm s-sorry, N-Naruto-k-kun—" Hinata starts, but Sasuke cuts her off.
"Stop following us. Dead-last. Useless," Sasuke snaps, glaring at Naruto and Sakura in turn. "Give it up." They disappear in two matched puffs of smoke.
"No," Naruto breathes. He falls to his knees.
"Sasuke! Sasuke-kun!" Sakura wails, running over to the pile of debris the two rogue ninja had stood upon only a moment ago. "Sasuke-kun, please, come back!" She shouts it so loudly, the nearby mountains echo with it, hurling her words back as if to mock her: Come back, come back, come back!
"It's no use, Sakura-chan," Naruto whispers, clutching his hands into fists, his jagged fingernails digging uneven, bloody crescents into his palms. "They were only clones." It's the oldest trick in the book—for Kami's sake, it's his trick—and now Sasuke is gone. Gone, because Naruto is a fool, and let his emotions get the better of him, letting Sasuke lead him right into his damned fucking trap—
"Sakura," Naruto croaks, "Sakura, we're going home—"
"What? NO! No, Naruto, we can't give up—"
Naruto shakes his head impatiently. "I'm not giving up. I'm getting the ANBU. And I'm going to ask the Raikage for help." Sakura heaves a huge sigh, choking back her tears. She reaches out for his outstretched hand, and they are gone in a yellow flash.
"They're not going to give up," Sasuke grunts.
Hinata is still reeling from the information her dispelled clone has given her. Huffing, she pushes off of a branch and catches up to Sasuke. "I know," she replies, her voice tremulous, "but we've bought ourselves time." She takes a deep, shaky breath and tries to steady herself. Gods, she feels terrible, like a total and utter asshole. She never meant to hurt—
"It was a good plan," Sasuke capitulates, breaking into her reeling thoughts.
Without thinking, she blurts out, "I wish you hadn't said that."
He raises a cool eyebrow. "That I hadn't complimented you?"
"No," she growls, "you know. You know." She forces chakra into her feet and pulls ahead of him, her shorter legs burning furiously for having been forced to run at Sasuke's pace for so long. It is the first time she is truly angry at him, the first time she wants to take his columnar, swan-like neck and break it in two.
The look on Naruto and Sakura's faces, when Sasuke had said that—even now, she feels her heart constrict and sink into her shoes. "Stop following us. Dead-last. Useless. Give it up." It echoes in her head like the punch-line to a bad joke; her eyes water and a headache begins to throb at the base of her skull.
Why is she helping this horrible man? Why is she formulating strategies for him that exploit Naruto and Sakura's weaknesses? Why doesn't she just let Naruto and Sakura have their Sasuke, let them do with him what they will? After all, it is a Team Seven thing, and she is an outsider. No, worse than that: she is the crowbar tearing their friendship—their family—asunder.
And what does she think she is doing, now that her cover has been blown and her Hokage—her mother fucking Hokage— knows she has been aiding and abetting a rogue S-classed ninja at best—or helping to murder his best friend at worst? She's going to be dishonorably discharged from the ranks, she's going to be executed, she's going to be—
"You're going to be fine," Sasuke snarls behind her, catching up effortlessly with his longer stride. "Stop worrying so much."
"What do you—"
"I'll write a note to the Idiot, before I die. I'll explain that I coerced you to help me. You'll be fine."
Hinata worries her bottom lip with her teeth; it infuriates her that he can read her thoughts so easily. She stumbles over a rock as she runs; she bites through her lip and it bleeds, dark crimson staining her pale skin. She wipes it away with the back of her grimy hand, streaking blood mixed with gray dirt across her cheek. "That's not the only thing I am concerned about," she replies darkly. It is the last thing she says to him the entire day. Even when they stop, limp with exhaustion at about midnight, she is as silent as the crescent moon floating in the eastern sky.
She is having second thoughts.
a/n Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think via your kind review:)