Baaawww! Took. So. Long. Just. GUH! Life!
Anyway, Sakura scares me in this chapter. Her and Sasuke's relationship and her and Naruto's are so backwards xDD
When Sasuke woke he was lying in a clean white bed. To his right was a long curtain acting like a wall. Against it there was the shadow of another bed and a small mound of someone he could hear breathing deeply. In the quiet he could hear someone beyond the room making tinkering noises with something that sounded like metal.
The raven blinked slow and long, trying to work out where he was.
A hospital..?
A flash of blond and blue cut across his vision and suddenly Sasuke was very aware of an aching in his leg and the presence of a bed, a real bed comforting his tired body.
"Naruto," he whispered into the room and the deep breathing someone made rustling noises with a blanket.
"Sasuke?" Sakura's voice called him from the other side of the curtain wall. The raven swallowed thickly trying to sort himself out. Bringing somehow clean hands to his face he shoved them through the knots in his hair, holding the tresses brutally off his face, pushing against the tangles to the point that he felt his skin pulling taut even as he lowered and drew his brow, gritting his teeth in an anguished expression.
"Sasuke?" she called again. He licked his lips and tensed as he heard her set bare feet on the cold floor of the clinic room.
She came padding around the curtain and stopped by his bedside. The heels of Sasuke's palms were grinding against his eyes. His skin smelt washed and scented. Not his smell.
"Sasuke." Fingertips on the back of his hands, gently tracing the blue line of vein until she came to grasp his wrist, pulling it away from his face. With one hand still covering his face he looked up at where she stood over him. She was dressed in a night gown; light blue and new. He could feel himself naked beneath his blanket.
"You're awake," she said with a smile that Sasuke couldn't return. He tugged the wrist she was holding from her fingers and lay it against his chest, trying his very best to find an appropriate face; something that wasn't as utterly pathetic as he was at this moment. Green eyes watched the process with a grim expression. Watched as the man drew into himself and stared at the ceiling.
"Sasuke—"
"Stop it. Don't talk." He felt her slouch in defeat as he cut her off.
'Don't talk'; Don't try to console me.
"Sasuke, don't worry-" Something in Sasuke's chest clenched. Rounding on her he yelled:
"Don't worry! You sound just like him and what happened in the end! He couldn't do a thing and only wound up in trouble himself! He'll die in there! And it's all my fault so don't you dare tell me 'don't worry'! Don't tell me anything! Leave me alone!"
He found himself half risen of the bed, hollowed chest heaving, lips curled in a vicious snarl. And she did nothing but look at him. The same clear eyes from the time when she broke bread with him.
He hated her. Hated everything.
It's so unfair!
"We'll get him out somehow." Anger rushed through Sasuke's body but was drowned out by the loud sob bubbling behind his lips.
"How!" cried Sasuke, voice breaking as he threw himself back against the pillow.
"I'll start working again," replied Sakura firmly. "I'll save up and I'll buy him. He's for a set price; I'll save that and get him back."
The silence grew thick between them before Sasuke moved his eyes, a calm black front covering churning insides. His voice betrayed him as he spoke.
"Can you really give those people money?"
Sakura stepped away, taken back.
"What do you mean?" Dark eyes back on the ceiling.
"If you pay them they'll stay in business right? Haven't you thought about it? Those children will stay there forever as long as that place is running. Can you really give those people money? You'll doom those kids."
"Why would you say something like that, Sasuke?" Sakura's voice was shrill and pitched up, bouncing painfully around in an echo.
Sasuke was sorry he'd said it but he couldn't help his mind being slave orientated. He was sorry he'd poisoned her good intentions. But every time someone was bought, with every payment, with every clink of gold on gold, he was sure it had crossed every slave's mind:
'We'll never get out of here…'
Sasuke closed his eyes as Sakura left the room, slamming the door.
.
.
.
"Sasuke, I'm putting some clothes on you now. Then I'm going to take a look at the bite." Kakashi spoke to him even as he pretended to be asleep. Warm hands lifting him with a supporting arm around him back, bending him over himself. He flopped forward and didn't open his eyes. Kakashi was threading his arms through the arm holes of some piece of clothing.
"Sasuke, I know you're awake. I don't care if you don't open your eyes but help me a little, ne?"
Sasuke sat up by himself and opened his eyes to slits. His body felt heavy. The room was warm with sunlight. He must have slept through the night. His leg held a painless throb. He wriggled his toes as Kakashi arranged the clothing that Sasuke now recognized as a gown under him and half way down his thighs. His careful hands and strong arms then lowered Sasuke back against the pillows. The doctor began to undress the leg that Sasuke now saw was casted with bulky dressings. Underneath it revealed black rotting flesh and the open wound, still sporting a yellow pus center. Kakashi clicked his tongue and shuffled across the room for new dressings. Sasuke turned his head away into the pillows, breathing in the cozy smell of his own hair that seemed to have been washed with a shampoo.
He didn't want to do anything.
He couldn't do anything.
Lying there was so much easier than thinking. Floating in the warm sunlight and letting Kakashi take care of the rest…
Sasuke was vaguely aware of the fact that Sakura wasn't in the room anymore. She must still be mad. She must have gone home. Maybe she was in another room. He didn't know.
He didn't know a lot of things.
Like what Naruto was doing. Or how he was doing.
That wound…
"Sasuke." Kakashi's call drew him from his hazy thoughts. He lolled his head sideways towards the other man's voice. "Sasuke, I gave you something to numb your leg but I don't think it will get better on its own. I'll have to drain it. Tomorrow probably."
Sasuke nodded slowly.
Do whatever you want. I just want to float here in the sunlight. I don't want to think. I don't want to feel…
"It will take a while to recover, Sasuke. You could stand yesterday but after draining, you won't be able to walk properly for a while. You should go and see Naruto before that happens."
The boy's breathing hitched and he opened his eyes properly, squinting at the light.
"Sakura will take you," said Kakashi.
"I don't want to go," replied Sasuke and the doctor seemed surprised that he'd spoken. His one dark eye was watching Sasuke closely.
"What kind of relationship do you have with Naruto? Can you just throw him away like that?"
The raven quickly turned his face away.
"We don't really have a relationship." Despite himself, Sasuke could feel a blush creeping up his neck. He clenched his eyes shut and rolled his shoulder so that he faced his back to Kakashi. The older man sighed.
"Sakura told me everything you know. She said you and Naruto are lovers." Sasuke tensed, split scenes of kisses and touching invading his mind.
Naruto.
"We're not lovers," whispered Sasuke. Kakashi's hand lingered on his injured leg a moment before he walked toward the door, pausing before he left.
"Sakura will take you tomorrow," he told Sasuke, leaving the teen curled on his side, fighting to find the floating sunlight.
But with just one mention of Naruto, with just the blonde's name, it was gone.
.
.
.
Amazingly enough, Sakura did come the next day. She was dressed in a simple white dress and was wearing a coat. Sasuke was glad, it hid her thin arms. Her hair was combed and shorter than the last time he'd seen her. She must have cut away the split ends. They stood together in the doorway; Sasuke unsteady because he refused crutches, for a long while before she, unsmiling, invited him away with her: "Let's go." She didn't use his name.
Sasuke didn't wear pants on the outing. He wore the gown Kakashi had dressed him in and one of the other man's heavy jackets. It was chilly and breezy outside and the young Uchiha spent most of the slow walk toward town holding down the sides of the gown. Sakura had to pause often to wait for Sasuke to catch his breath. His leg didn't hurt much thanks to whatever Kakashi had given him, but it was heavy and awkward; like it didn't belong to his body anymore.
Nearing the slave quarters something stuck in Sasuke's throat and he thought he was going to vomit. The urge to be sick only got worse as just up the road, Sakura turned to him and smiled.
"You shouldn't make such a horrible face, Sasuke. You'll make Naruto sad."
The smile was unnerving and Sasuke was sure that just as he could see it faltering at the edges, Naruto too, would see through it. She kept looking at him until he smoothed his expression to emotionless.
They walked into the line of the open front slave quarters and Sasuke couldn't breathe.
"Sakura, Sasuke!" The blonde was sitting right where Sasuke had sat the first time Naruto had come to visit. He was leant up against the wall with his legs crossed and hands in his lap. He tried to move but winced, bringing fingers to trail along where the cut from the guard was. Sasuke was sure he was going to throw up.
"Don't move Naruto, you might rip the stitches. Here, I bought you something for the pain."
"T-thanks, it actually hurts more now than it did when it happened. I guess I wasn't really focused on it at the time haha…"
"It's because it's colder today, it'll ache."
"Yeah. But I'll be alright, I heal pretty quick. Ah- Sasuke, how's your leg. I bet ya can't really sit down with it. You look so tall all the way up there, even though I'm bigger than you. Funny huh?"
He couldn't speak. He wasn't even sure what he was seeing.
Did Naruto look like this before?
Shadowed eyes and raggy hair overgrown. He was thin from worry over Sakura and Sasuke. The smile on his stupid face looked tight.
Sasuke's good leg buckled and he went down on one knee, not feeling the pain it should have caused.
"Hehe, there you are, I can actually see ya now," said Naruto, looking to Sasuke, smiling at him with his goofy grin and endless blue eyes. Sasuke licked his lips and for some reason found himself lifting a hand toward the other boy.
"Eh? What is it, Sasuke?" Naruto blinked at the incoming hand, smiling unsurely as Sasuke's hand came to rest on his face, stroking under his eye with his thumb.
For a moment the two were lost in the moment and Sasuke felt something swell inside him; Naruto was warm, still alive. His skin against Sasuke's was warm…
Naruto's skin…
And then he saw it.
Against his hand, so pale and clean. Naruto's skin. Naruto's warm skin, filmed with a disturbing grey colour that he knew all too well. All of a sudden, Naruto's cheek bone against his palm was horrifying.
I shouldn't be able to feel it that much!
Wheeling back, stumbling to his feet, Sasuke retreated with a cry, wild eyes at Naruto's wrists, the exposed length of his forearm revealed by his rolled up sleeves. It was all over him! That grey! That grey!
No, no, no, no…
It looked like death. Sasuke never recognized it as such when it had tinged both his and Sakura's skin but now he saw it. That grey, it looked just like death.
Eyes on Naruto's bandaged chest showing at the neck of his shirt. The creeping grey across Naruto's once so healthy collar bone. Sasuke shook his head from side to side slowly, backing up into the street. People who walked by yelled at him but he went on shaking his head.
"Sasuke? What's wrong?"
"Oi, Sasuke, what are you doing?"
With a horrified roar, Sasuke surged sideways in a clumsy lunge and started off up the street.
I put that there! That grey! I put that there! On him! On Naruto! I put that there! It's all my fault!
He didn't make it far, his legs giving out a little way up the road. Sasuke crumpled onto his side. When he was a slave he hadn't noticed people going by; he hadn't been a watcher there, he'd had bigger things to worry about, but now, the sound of footsteps going past him was incredibly loud. He was shaking.
He didn't know how long he lay there but after what felt like forever, Sakura appeared beside him.
"Can you get up?" she asked. Sasuke tried to help himself, realizing how stupid and pathetic he looked lying in the middle of the road, but in the end Sakura had to do most of the work in dragging him to his feet and making him take steps toward home. All the while Sasuke's mind was racing.
As a child he'd never really had friends. His family had been fairly well off and he spent a lot of time at home by himself or toddling after his older brother. But one day all that had changed and Sasuke had ended up on the streets. No one cared for him then, no one had worried or done anything for him. He'd learned to steal and sleep wherever he could. No one saw him.
And then he'd become a slave, and still, no one cared for him. By that point the soft touch of his mother's hands was lost and he didn't think anyone would ever make an effort for him ever again; he would be going off to some big house to be worked to the bone anyway.
And then Naruto had come along and everything changed again. He thought he was used to it; the sunny man looking after him with the dobe-y grin of his. Doing all those things for him. He was sure he could handle that by now. Even when Naruto had bought him he'd been so happy he didn't have time to think about how much trouble it would cause the blonde. Because Naruto too was so happy about it.
But seeing Naruto behind those bars for Sasuke's sake, seeing him touch the knife wound that was all because of Sasuke…
He just didn't know how to handle the smile Naruto still gave him after he'd caused the other man so much trouble… and pain. Even now he was hurting Naruto. Despite knowing what it was like, knowing that ridiculous warm feeling you got when someone came to visit, Sasuke hadn't been able to smile. He'd recoiled like Naruto had burnt him and run away…
.
.
.
At Kakashi's door Sakura stopped on the step and Sasuke asked her where she was going. The emotion in Sasuke's voice seemed to move the woman but she squared her shoulders and turned back to show her hard expression.
"You're pathetic," she said, trying to sound firm and hard but her green eyes were glistening with tears that soon came spilling down her cheeks. "You're pathetic, Sasuke! I can't believe you did that today! You're the person he loves the most and you show him that face? You ran away from him, Sasuke!" She raised a hand, moving to slap the young man, but it trembled and did nothing before dropping back to her side. She stepped out into the street, wiping her eyes on the arm of her coat.
"You better get your act together, Sasuke. Before I bring Naruto home, you better get a grip." She bowed curtly to Kakashi who stood behind Sasuke in the door.
"I'll start work tomorrow, see you then, Sensei."
Sasuke stared after her and continued to stare after her over Kakashi's shoulder as the doctor carried him back to bed. The rest of the day and all of the night, Sasuke didn't sleep. There was no way he could go back to floating in the sunlight now.
