Author's Notes: I just wanted to thank you all for being such a polite, sincere group of readers. I'm glad you are enjoying Cutting Water enough to give such a good response. Please keep reading, and I hope to live up to expectation.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and am making no profit from this fan fiction.

Cutting Water

Chapter Twelve

By Nessie

Sasuke healed, but slowly enough that it drove him to ill temper. He had intended to recover and show Long Tenten proper retaliation, but his wound continued to plague his health. Kabuto's incompetence began to manifest as the days passed; not only had his marriage plan failed, but the man knew precious little about healing, forced to continuously turn to the woman named Sakura for knowledge.

Sakura herself had taken on a lesser-of-two-evils mentality, and that was something Sasuke could understand. Survival was an instinct, and Kabuto's hostility had pushed her into a delicate position that the Uchiha had not been well enough to contemplate much. For her, it was help or die. Now that his condition was no longer life-threatening, he was beginning to find a great deal of dissatisfaction from the current state of affairs.

Even so, Sasuke could not deny that Kabuto held a considerable amount of loyalty for him, although he suspected it was out of a wish to be part of a group rather than try to get by on his own. Kabuto served well, as Sasuke was still mostly bed-ridden and unable to move on his own. Nights brought the most intense pain, and he tended to strain the stitches in his chest when he moved in his sleep.

The only compensation was being tended to by Sakura, who was still a distraction, but at least she provided him the opportunity to think of something besides revenge, honor, and humiliation. She did not speak to him much, and the silence was often disquieting but bearable.

"I have been here for five days," she murmured one afternoon when she was ordered into the tent to change his bandages.

"Four," Sasuke corrected, his voice rough with the concentration it took to ignore the soft hands that held him still while she worked. Her touch, like her words, was impersonal and light. He did not feel any particularly strong reaction to the feel of her skin against his, but her eyes were the same as they had been when he had first seen them – they ignited something within him.

"I suppose it has seemed longer." She secured the wrapping around his middle and added in a voice so low he almost did not hear her: "Four days more without Neji."

The comment made him remember his desire to face the Hyuuga, to test his own strength against the other man's. The notion felt pitiful at present, while he lay nearly motionless on the floor of a tent in the middle of the Chinese wilderness.

"Looking at you makes me resentful," he said suddenly. He had not intended to say it; indeed, he had not even realized he felt that way, but the words were out of Sasuke's mouth and hung in the air like mist between them.

Sakura sat beside him, her eyes wide but unsurprised. She had probably not been expecting him to say anything to her. After a moment, the set of her shoulders relaxed and she began to gather up the used bandages. "I feel the same when I look at myself."

Such an admission made Sasuke angle his head to look at her. His vantage point showed him the line of her neck leading to the underside of her chin, where strands of petal-like hair clung in the heat of the warm day. Her eyes were not trained on him, and that alone gave him the strength to reply. "Since you arrived, you mean."

"No. Since before Neji ever left Japan. I have felt purposeless," she said, gazing off at the slit in the tent's doorway where the sky could be seen. Her face tightened, as though the blue of it hurt her eyes. "Most Japanese women do. When we were children, I saw Neji always working; training and serving his family in the hopes of reaching higher lofts. And I could only do what was expected of me…learn my place, learn to heal. Even being taught to read and write gave me no sense of usefulness."

"Your place is better than most," Sasuke commented, bitterness leaking through in his tone. Sakura's head lowered a fraction in acknowledgement.

"There is truth in that. And yet…" Blinking rapidly, she went to her feet and stepped forward as though to leave. She did not move beyond three steps. "Yet I watched Neji sail for this land, and I felt no better than if I were clan-less and alone."

"You do not know what that means." The bitterness was a spring now, flowing through the tent from the anger in his gaze. "If you must travel to be with someone, then you cannot feel true loneliness."

Her eyes went to his then, catching him off-guard. The cool green of them felt like a salve, and the mist dissipated, the spring was dammed. "I'm sorry," she whispered. It was not fear that prompted her apology, and Sasuke's stomach coiled tightly in response. "Your suffering…I don't know what it is…but it is great."

He dug his fingers into the mattress beneath him, unable to handle the tension she brought to him was only her soft look. Sasuke had never expected them to share even this much, and now he wished they had not spoken. "How do you know?"

"You fight hard. You sacrifice. If you didn't, you would not be hurt, and you would have no need for me."

The honesty that came through her was familiar and strange at the same time. He had known so little sincerity in his life and Sasuke wondered where he had met with it before…and realized after considering it that the only times had ever been when he had combated Long Tenten.

Sasuke looked away to have a reprieve from her. "A face like yours…" He meant to say that she made him uncomfortable or something that would discourage her looking at him. "It makes me think of things worth fighting for." Instead, it was he who took a turn to be honest, but he could not figure out why. "And…there seems to be purpose for you in that."

He heard her take a startled breath, and when the strength to look at her again returned, she had gone. And it was true; the sky was so blue it hurt to see it.


Sasuke prevented himself from thinking of her by sleeping, coaxing his body to take the rest he had had so little of in the months since rekindling the battle with the Long clan. Sheer exhaustion held him still but when he awoke hours later he knew that he would be restless that and most likely damage Sakura's careful stitching.

She returned to him with Kabuto that night to check for fever and reported that his body temperature was once more normal and would allow him to heal at a faster pace as long as he did not overdo movement and remained patient. Sasuke was not sure whether he was pleased or displeased by the information.

"I should stay in here and keep watch overnight," said Kabuto. "It would be bad for you if you tore out your stitches, Sasuke-sama."

"I will do it." Sakura said the words so calmly and with a tone that suggested the idea was obvious. She added without intent to provoke, "You would not know what to do if he did tear them out."

Kabuto was provoked at any rate. "If I can keep him alive—"

"Leave," Sasuke growled to Kabuto. "I am sick of your efforts that only prove your ineptitude. Find your worth in things you can actually do, Kabuto."

Sasuke's right-hand man made a fist but was obedient, and with a swift turn that openly revealed his anger, he swept out of the tent. His stomping could be heard until he was well away. Sakura remained, lowering herself to the ground where she learned against the pole that supported the tent.

"Why do you keep him here if he does not satisfy you?" Sasuke was taken unaware once more by her initiative to talk.

The genuine curiosity he heard in her voice urged response. "Because I cannot afford to decrease my numbers in any way. I am already at a disadvantage with the clan of Long. And Kabuto is a skilled fighter; dismissing him would practically be suicide."

"Some would rather die than be accompanied by those they hate."

"Then they are fools who did not learn to endure."

Sakura watched him, the lantern in the tent lighting up the left side of her face with a pale illumination that made her hair stand out against the gentle curve of her cheek. "Why do you endure, Uchiha-san?"

He snorted, not at her question but at her decision to address him so formally. "Do not call me that. I've no need for your false respect."

"Then…"

"'Sasuke' is simple enough for you, I would imagine."

Her gaze lowered to her feet, pushed tensely together in front of her as she hugged her knees to her chest. "Do you call fighting endurance…Sasuke?" Her tentative try-out of his name amused him, but briefly.

His jaw tightened. "I endure pain. I endure inconvenience. I suppose you thought too that I enjoy it." When she did not say anything, he went on. "I don't. I have a meaning in it."

"You have no reason to trust me," she began.

"My entire clan was murdered by my older brother." He heard her inhale sharply. They seemed to be repeatedly surprising each other this evening. "He spared me – not out of mercy, but out of interest. He maintained that I should grow to claim the land of the Long clan, as my father failed to do, should I wish to exact revenge upon him.

He was correct. I do want revenge. Itachi knew that well enough, and I fight the Longs for the purpose of defeating him. I haven't any idea if peace will come to me with his death, but I know that nothing else will bring me satisfaction in life if I cannot kill him the way he killed—"

Sasuke stopped himself short, breathing hard with the rage that had risen to the surface while telling Sakura of Itachi. "Everyone," he concluded lowly, the word brushing past his lips, energy spent.

Sakura stared, but he thought that her expression did not hold judgment – not for him, anyway. "Your brother," she replied after several long minutes of silent consideration. "Itachi…you are sure he will come to you? If you take the land?"

"You are not the first to ask me that." Sasuke closed his eyes. "He left me alive for sport. I feel certain he will return. If he is dead, it will be cruel that I was not the one to kill him. I want to him to see that I achieved what our father could not, what he did not, and I want him to die in this country that he cursed himself."

She breathed raggedly as though physically affected by his story. "You speak to me very quickly, after only four days."

"It seems I do have reason to trust you."

Sakura kept quiet, moving only to blow out the lantern when he seemed tired enough to sleep. Exhaustion encroached, brought on by the unexpected passion it had taken to tell her of his past and of his desires. Sasuke was mostly astonished with himself for saying things to her which he had never said to anyone. It was not until he was almost asleep that he heard her voice, soft and distant in the darkness of his mind.

"Perhaps you are one to be understood…and should have my true respect."

Sasuke did not know if these words were real, or if she was the one to utter them.

To Be Continued…