Somebody
By. Misery's-Toll
Chapter Fourteen: Moving On
Feel the touch of grief
You stand in disbelief
Can steal the earth from right beneath you
And falling in so far
They know just where you are
Yeah, but there ain't no way to reach you
-"Freedom" by David Gray
When Sakura wakes up, she begins a new routine.
She doesn't stare out the window at the not-yet sun-brightened world, waiting for an angel to take her by the hands and lead her away. She doesn't then slowly put on her ill-fitting clothing, thinking of everything, but nothing that matters. She doesn't say goodbye to a mother and father that won't look at her.
When Sakura wakes up, she picks out an only slightly-too-large outfit that belonged to her mother (she removed her mother's belongings from the dark corners of her father's closet, and put them in the brighter corners of her own) and goes to Ino's bathroom and showers with hot water. Ino doesn't say anything; she just looks at her wearily as she passes through. When Sakura feels satisfied with how clean she is, she pulls on the clean clothing and brushes her hair. For the first time in her life, she applies cover-up on her own, lightly patting it over the not-quite-healed blemishes on her face and neck as she's seen her sister do. She takes some of her mother's older, paler lip balm and hopes that maybe someday soon her lips will heal from their chapped and bruised state.
She can't help but be surprised by how highly stocked the refrigerator is with six-packs of cheap beer.
When he can't find solace in his children, he looks for it in the bottom of the bottle. Hurts, doesn't it?
But she eats breakfast she has prepared by herself, just like any other morning, and leaves some wrapped in tin foil for her one parent, and a plate of hot food out for Ino.
She's finished getting ready early –she got up earlier than usual—and so she walks to school under her own jurisdiction. On her way she sees Sasuke lying in the front lawn of one of the cookie-cutter houses. The grass is a little taller than that of the other houses, the paint job a little less new.
Sakura stops at the curb.
"Hello, Sasuke."
He sits up and then nods at her in greeting.
"Is this where you live?" she asks, fully absorbing the way the plants run wild and the house, while identical to the other houses in every way, somehow seems to let the earth absorb it in a homier way than one could probably imagine one of these carbon-copy homes could manage.
"Aa," he says, "Itachi and I live here by ourselves."
Sakura bites her lip before remembering the cosmetic applied there, and she quickly licks her teeth clean of any lip balm, "Would it be okay if…I mean, could I come in?"
Sasuke looks up at her through his dark eyelashes, imagining her as that stumbling, dirty, socially-incapable girl she was when he first met her. Now she stands before him with purpose, clean and smoothed, and he knows she is at least a little bit happier than she was. And through all this, she's still the same person.
"Yeah. Come on," he gets up fluidly, "But you might not like what you see."
He holds the door open for her, but she barely remembers to murmur a thank you as she enters. He doesn't notice her distraction anyway as he calls out at a regular indoor-volume, "Itachi, you'd better be wearing pants."
The house is dim, the living room air thick with the smoke of the cigarette in the hand of a young man in a bathrobe and a pair of old sweatpants that sits in a leather recliner. His skin is a tad waxy looking, and she can't tell if that is because he is unhealthy, or because of obvious humidity. The half-asleep man gives her a half-wave in greeting before taking another drag from the cigarette.
The room isn't particularly organized, but it isn't unclean. A bit dusty on the shelves and around the fireplace, but the rug looks vacuumed enough and all piles of paper and unnecessary items are shoved against walls or in corners of the room. The furniture is new and decent looking, the two boys' taste in furnishings impeccable, though slightly cluttered with sports magazines and television guides. An actual television sits atop the fireplace, images of a kung-fu movie flicking across the screen.
"It's this room, my room, the bathroom, the –what would you call it?—study, and the kitchen," he says as he begins to drift in the direction of his bedroom, "Itachi decided he'd prefer to sleep in front of the television than in a bedroom, so we converted his room into a storage room of sorts."
Is this how angels live?
The room is simple, clean, empty. Just a made bed, a desk with a computer on it, and a chair.
Sakura sits on the foot of the bed. She thinks that maybe you can judge a little about a person by measuring the firmness of their bed. Sasuke's bed is lumpy and uncomfortable beneath her though, and she thinks that maybe you can't judge a person by something that they can't really have any sort of attachment to at all.
"You aren't connected to this place, are you?" she asks, poking at the threadbare carpet with her shoe, "You don't really live here, do you? It's just a place you come back to at the end of the day."
"Aa," he replies, leaving Sakura unsatisfied.
She chews her bottom lip before dropping backwards onto the bed, feeling the lumpy mattress beneath her spine. She stares at the ceiling, her eyes building images out of the raised texture.
"Isn't it weird? We don't know anything about each other. Like what each other's favorite colors are, or what we like to do," she tilts her head to look at him, "But we still know each other and we're still friends, right?"
Sasuke doesn't respond, but he drops backwards beside her, only more gingerly than she, and she thinks that maybe it has something to do with what he has hidden beneath those thick layers of clothing.
She whispers, "Will I ever get to see them? Your wings?"
He doesn't respond. He stares at her for several long moments before turning away, breaking any sort of hope she could have had for a reply, "We should go now; we'll be late for school."
"Yeah," she says quietly, nodding, and then repeats herself louder, "Yeah."
-=Ino=-
When Ino wakes up she is cold and tired and her eyes hurt so much that she just wants to claw them out so that she won't have to feel them anymore.
Unbreakable, unbreakable, unbreakable, she tells herself over and over again as she wills herself to sit up. She suddenly lurches over the side of the bed and vomits into the small trashcan beside it, retching and gagging for several minutes, her greasy hair clinging to her face like a second skin. As soon as her body has stopped heaving she wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her pale violet night-shirt. She collapses back into the pillows behind her just as Sakura walks through her room, her dainty feet padding across the carpet. Their eyes meet, Sakura's calm and maybe (surprisingly) slightly challenging, and Ino's red and crusty and maybe (not-so-surprisingly) defeated. The pink-haired girl shuts the door to the bathroom behind her, and soon after, the shower begins to run. Ino blinks her puffy eyes a few times before huddling underneath the blankets, deciding that maybe she won't go to school today. No point, she thinks. Going back to school pregnant with bleeding eyes and a bleeding heart seems inconceivable.
When Ino wakes up a second time, she feels even worse. But she slowly peels back her ocher sweat-dampened sheets from her pale skin anyway. She strips off her clothing completely and examines herself in the full-length mirror on her door. For once her face is completely void of leftover make-up.
You are so ugly, she thinks to herself, prodding at her swelling breasts, and at her not-yet-showing stomach, wondering how much time she has left before she's nothing but a distorted memory of her former-glamorous self. Her hair is a slick, lengthy mass that tumbles down her shoulders in sleep-creased waves. She tucks a strand of it behind her ear, as her mother (her first mother, her real mother) had done, a silent tear trickling over her cheekbone. She shivers and rubs at her stinging face.
"Stop it!" she shouts at her hideous reflection, repulsed by the continuous flow of tears, "She never loved you!"
She kicks the mirrored-door and shrieks, dropping to the floor and holding her aching foot, screaming curses in a high-pitched voice. She curls into herself in the duck-and-cover position, sobbing uncontrollably, ignoring the wetness streaming from her eyes and nose.
"I hate you, I hate you, I fucking hate you!" she shouts at no one, the sound muffled by her knees.
After her breathing calms down a little bit, she turns her head, her tears smearing against the bare-skin of her knees. She looks at her (terrible, horrible, hideous) face and laughs.
Ino stands up shakily and enters her bathroom, turning on the shower and scrubbing at herself, ignoring the immediate blast of ice-cold water until her teeth are chattering and her body is shivering. For a brief moment, she thinks of Sakura, and how she showers like this at every opportunity she is given. And thinking of Sakura, she thinks of school, and thinking of school makes her think of her beloved-
"Shikamaru," she whispers, the freezing water sputtering from her raw lips.
She doesn't even think about the boy who may be sitting at the picnic table at lunch, waiting for her.
You can scream and you can writhe, but the truth will always remain the same…you're full of nothing.
-=Hinata=-
When Hinata first started at Konoha High school, she hated herself, considered herself a complete waste of space. She was awkward, confused, angry at the world, (herself, herself, herself) and at the fact that the only man who was willing to talk to her only did so because of pedophilic tendencies. She loved everyone and everything but herself, wishing she had never been born to ruin the lives of her family and to lose the only thing she had ever been blessed with (the bastard of a child who was killed by one of the people she loved most.)
As far as she was concerned, she didn't exist (because no matter how many times she went over to Kiba's house and ate lunch with him, he was just another kid who looked at her as something to be pitied). People didn't touch her, talk to her, look at her. She was something to not even be avoided; she was just something not to be noticed. And then she met him. He was so bright he practically glowed. He was different from the others. He didn't touch people, talk to people, look at people. But he looked at her.
She remained insanely insecure, but their little group of friends grew over time. People loved her for her. She existed. She wasn't particularly confident or talkative, but she could love herself without fear.
And then he returned.
She didn't expect to ever see him again. With coke-bottle glasses and an all-knowing smile, he was a twisted man who touched forbidden fruits and picked them apart until there was nothing left.
And she had never been more terrified in her life.
So she goes to school each day, telling herself that today she will stand up, face her fears, bring a conclusion to the horror that has always lied restless beneath her skin, always to back out and skip her final class of the day.
And today as she walks toward the classroom her thoughts are nothing but disjointed words.
You can…No don't…danger…no…Naruto will be there…but!...Kabuto…
Hinata hyperventilates. Just as she is about to place her hand on the doorknob to the Biology classroom, a student exiting the room swings the door open, and it hits her in the cheek, sending her sprawling on the floor.
Immediately someone is there helping her pick up her books. She squeaks in embarrassment and begins to pick up the others. They both stand simultaneously and she looks up from beneath her overgrown bangs and lets out another undignified squeak. She bows her head, and lets out a shrill "Thank you."
Kabuto smiles at her, handing her the books he collected, "You are very welcome. That was rude of them to knock you down and not help you back up."
Her cheeks burn brightly and her head swims. She can hear her own pounding heartbeat and she wonders he can't hear it too. He begins to say something else, but she can't hear anything over the sound of her own sped-up breathing and heart, the feeling of something ripping away at her gut making her want to scream. She sways for a moment, and then she collapses.
"You bastard! What did you do to her?"
Naruto…
Hinata feels her inert self being raised into the arms of someone, and she hopes it isn't Kabuto. Another hand, one that's clammy and cold, touches her damp face.
"Don't you dare touch her," Naruto's voice growls.
Hinata's eyes barely flicker behind her eyelids before they slowly open half-way. She licks her lips, "It's alright Naruto," she breathes, "he didn't do anything to me."
Naruto is crouched down on one knee, her head propped up against the raised one, his arm holding her against him. He brushes her slick bangs away from her face, "Are you okay? Can you stand?"
Hinata is immediately startled by the burning concerned intensity in his eyes and it takes a moment for her to find her voice, and even then she fumbles with the words, "A-uh-um…I'm not…um…I'm not s-sure…"
"I'll get the nurse," Kabuto says smoothly, standing from his own kneeled position.
"Let's get out of here," Hinata whispers, trembling as Naruto drapes her arm over his shoulder, and she thinks she almost dies when he puts his own arm around her waist, her face flushing a deep crimson. She can't understand why, but her body is still in full-panic mode, random muscles tensing up and releasing, spasms flicking through her.
He leads her out of the building and into the courtyard, half-dragging her to a corner where two walls intersect, and she momentarily thinks that this can't be particularly good for her deteriorating shoes, but this thought is fleeting as he lowers her down to the earthy soil, and she instead thinks of how glad she is that it hasn't rained so it isn't muddy.
"Hinata, if he ever comes anywhere near you, you scream for me immediately. I will make sure that he never ever touches you. Promise me you'll do that. Promise me you'll scream for me. And if I'm not there then scream for –I hate to say this—Kiba. And if neither of us are there, you just don't go to class," he says, brushing her bangs off of her lightly perspiring forehead again, and her blush stands out strongly against her pallid sickly features.
"I promise," she says, her voice finally coming back to her, her heart finally calming itself. Her body still doesn't stop its spasms, despite her attempts to still it.
"Are you cold?" he asks, his forehead tensing, "It's kinda warm for Februrary…"
"I'm…I'm okay, Naruto. Thank you."
He places the back of his hand against her forehead, checking for a temperature, crouched down in front of her. As her mind clears itself of the silver-haired man from her past and her mind fills of nothing but the magnificent boy in front of her, she becomes painfully aware of the body heat radiating from him and his wonderfully-smelling breath, different from its customary aroma of ramen. Her breathing and his own match in tempo, and she somehow knows like a sense she was born with that his heart is in time with hers, his thoughts in time with hers.
She is somehow completely unsurprised, completely free of fear, completely wanting this as his lips mesh together with hers as though they were originally one. The kiss is soft and sweet and everything she would have ever dreamed of, full of admiration and concern and lovelovelove and nothing like the pleasure-empty touches of—
As he pulls away, his eyelashes flutter against her rose-colored cheeks. She holds out her tiny slender hand for him and he takes it, sitting beside her, pulling her head to his shoulder where he lays his own atop hers.
"I won't ever leave you, Hinata."
-=Sakura=-
Sometimes
looking at Sasuke
I think about things that I
Forbidden.
probably shouldn't.
Like what it would feel like to have his hands touching me
a soft angel's caress
his fingers woven through my hair
brushing across my hollow stomach
my neck
You'll never get it.
my thighs
It aches, doesn't it?
and then suddenly he'll be looking back
and it's like a burning fire of need
smoldering deeply
within my gut.
Today his eyes are the color of
slick grey stones
like the ones that I used to find in the pond
Never coming back.
in the backyard of Ino's house.
But they look like maybe how the stones would feel if
I held them in my hands
and they absorbed all of the life from within me
so the pretty stones would pulse with warmth
and happiness
You don't have that kind of power.
and maybe potentially
love.
Sasuke continues to stare for a long long time
and then finally parts his lips to speak.
"My favorite color is blue."
I lick my lips and brush my
unusually smooth hair
You're just like a little girl playing dress-up. Let's pretend we're human. Let's pretend we're normal.
behind my ears.
"My favorite color is red."
He gives me a rare smile.
It isn't very large
and it doesn't last very long, but
they seem to be increasing in number
and that fills me with more warmth than
any sort of festering burn in my gut possibly could.
"Goodnight, Sasuke," I say and
give him the largest smile I can
before I enter the house
A house of sobs and tears rather than moans and screams of ecstasy. Who would have thought you would ever miss the latter?
where I can hear father watching some sort of smut TV.
"Goodnight, Sakura."
I close the door.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or the songs used.
A/N: Hello again, dears. Have you checked on the poll on my profile? If you haven't, please do. And if you wouldn't mind, tell me in your reviews who you voted for?
So I'm kind of THRILLED by the amount of reviews I have. I have never made it past 129 reviews for a story. And the 129 reviews was for a story I wrote almost three years ago. Do you know how old I was? Twelve. Twelve years old. Ha. 220 is too good to be true.
Ha. Ho. Hum. Sorry for the late update. I meant to have this out on Friday...but that didn't happen. I hope you schmancy Americans like myself had a fabulous Thanksgiving. And I hope you survived Black Friday as well. THE INSANITY!!!
Give a big round of applause to Ira Feye who beta'd this despite how busy she was!
Please review!
-MT