FANDOM & CATEGORY - Naruto / dark-suspense-romance
PAIRING(S) - Sakura/Kakashi. Some totally non-sexual strains of "We're just friends!" Kiba/Sakura. Yeah, right.
WARNINGS - Gore, death, sexual innuendo, torture, drug abuse.
SUMMARY - It began with a hostage recovery mission. It ended in bloodshed and death. Caught in a circle of missing medications, her companions dead for mysterious reasons, Sakura means to get to the bottom of everything, even if she has to sacrifice what little remains of her sanity to do so. Dignity - what's this thing called dignity?
DISCLAIMER: Demeter1 made me do it.
NOTES: Just pretend that the Greek world and mythology kinda maybe sorta exists in the Naruto world. Otherwise, the logistics are kind of painful.
It didn't take very long for Sasuke to reach the small camp surrounded by ninjas. He rode the edges of the Berserk, his mind shattering in so many different directions. He mapped out his actions for each of the six guards in the camp, reactions and counters spreading out in his mind like a so-many branched tree, a go game of living pieces and strategies stretching the limits of his imagination and strategic abilities. He crouched within the trees, masking his presence and suppressing the bloodlust that rippled beneath his skin. He rocked on his heels, his sharingan-eyes half-closed in contemplation.
The sibilant voice didn't usually like him, but it was looking forward to some mindless massacre. He shoved it back into the shadows, ignoring its shrieks of protests and the seductive possibilities in surrendering to the burning power at the base of his neck. No; what he needed to do was ask questions.
He could enjoy asking questions. Oh, yes. He would enjoy it. He would be patient and wait – he could give Naruto and the Genin that. He'll give them the consideration of being out of earshot before he began questioning.
When Tsunade entered the clinic, Kakashi, Sakura draped across his back, was just leaving the backrooms. Dr. Ishin was closely at his heel with Sakura's patient folder tucked firmly under her arm. Tsunade frowned in curiosity.
"Hokage-sama," Dr. Ishin began firmly, "why hasn't Haruna-kun seen anyone regarding these seizures she's been experiencing?"
Kakashi glanced from doctor to leader, glad that he didn't have to be caught between the two women like a vise. He stood at Tsunade's side for this, but if it were just a little more behind than it was beside, who would take notice?
"I did send someone," Tsunade said, crossing her arms before herself. "The seizures should not concern you."
"The impact of the seizures given her current state-"
"I am aware, Doctor," Tsunade cut the other woman's rattled words off with a curt tone and an irritated wave of her hand. "But there is no need to discuss a patient's information in a public setting. Privacy laws and all that," she added snidely. Dr. Ishin tucked one hand into her pocket while studying Tsunade's face. She bowed her head finally in concession. "Have a good day, Dr. Ishin," Tsunade said. "We shall speak of this later."
Tsunade turned her heel and made her way to the door, Kakashi falling into step with her. Once upon the street outside the clinic, they melted into the shadows of the background, wrapping illusions about to deceive watchful eyes. Moving quickly from one end of Konoha to another, they soon reached Tsunade's private quarters.
Carefully, gently, Kakashi laid Sakura on Tsunade's neatly-made bed. Tsunade wordlessly sank into a chair and looked at Sakura. "What are we going to do?" she asked as she tiredly massaged her temples. "How far-reaching is this damage, and how are we going to recover from it?"
Kakashi said nothing as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms thoughtfully before himself. "The good doctor," he drawled, "tried to pin post-traumatic stress disorder on Sakura-san."
"And what do you think?"
Kakashi shrugged. "I'm not a med-nin or a psychologist." There was something slightly accusatory in his voice, but he felt it was acceptable given the circumstances. Tsunade fluffed one braid as she cocked an eyebrow at Kakashi.
"You don't approve of me sending her for an evaluation."
He selected his words with care. "Evaluations usually don't have the feel of one of Ibiki-san's dissections."
"Are you saying that because of your witness to Sakura's behavior and how fast this is moving, or is it because of the events around Sakura's behavior?"
Kakashi was silent for a moment as his gaze strayed to Sakura's figure. "She was confused and lost because of the hallucinations caused by gas. She relays events that no one can publicly confirm," his stress upon that word did not go unmissed as Tsunade smiled bitterly, "and she's… emotionally fragile."
"She's broken, Kakashi. Can't you feel that?" Tsunade slumped in her chair. "She broke down before the council, her reason and sanity shattering into shards. I came to visit her and she was screaming about snakes, broken again. If she can't handle the stress of the aftermath, then how can we trust her in the future when she has to go back to killing and protecting… to the blood and the pain? My own mistakes and losses crippled me for so many years, and it was sheer dumb luck that Naruto happened to be in the right place and the right time, following the right sequence of events, to force me, kicking and screaming, to get over my phobia of blood."
Kakashi's gaze lingered upon Sakura, before turning in on itself and looking off into the distant past that lingered only within his memories and experiences. "But she's not broken," Kakashi said finally. "She's not broken – if Sakura were to break, she'd lose her emotions. She'd become stoic, without reaction or feeling. She's instead become more affectionate, more clingy, and more open with her emotions." He pinned Tsunade with a steely glare. "None of which match with classic PTSD symptoms."
Tsunade shrugged. "I know that."
"Hokage-san, why did you let that doctor see Sakura?"
"A hunch."
Kakashi was silent, waiting for Tsunade to compound upon her explanation. With a sigh, Tsunade leaned forward. "I have a feeling for what's happening, but I need to remove the one factor that doesn't fit into the puzzle – Sakura. It's like – whenever I look at the pieces, I see one puzzle. But I can't help but shake the feeling that the reason why we can't seem to get anywhere with the puzzle is because there are more than one to begin with. You can't fit the pieces of two different puzzles together and hope to come up with an accurate picture of either one as one."
Kakashi looked at Sakura. "But we don't even know what we're looking for," he said. "And that still doesn't explain why Sakura had to see the doctor."
Tsunade knitted her fingers together. "For all the two puzzles, Sakura seems to be a part of both. If we can understand how she became involved, maybe we can separate the two puzzles."
Kakashi mulled over Tsunade's words. She stood and retreated to the bedroom's entrance. Kakashi's sharp, indrawn breath brought her up-short. "What is it?" she asked, hurrying back to his side.
Kakashi's eye was wide as he gazed unseeing at the wall. "We may be looking at this in the wrong manner – what if she's not supposed to have a role? What if the two puzzles are connected in an entirely different area, one which we completely ignored?"
Tsunade's eyes narrowed sharply. "What do you mean?"
"What if the puzzle we're looking at isn't a puzzle, but a cleverly-disguised trap?" Kakashi turned his gaze upon Tsunade – she took an unexpected step back at the leashed anger in his face, and then straightened her shoulders as if subconsciously chagrined at backing down so suddenly. "We've been looking beneath the beneath, trying to understand what we're seeing, but what if there isn't a beneath the beneath? What if this is all just a consequence of smoke and mirrors?"
An icy shiver skittered down her spine. Tsunade rubbed her arms as goose bumps prickled her skin. "Then we're all in danger," she said softly. "We have to alert the others."
"That's the problem."
Tsunade was still for a long moment. "There are those whom I still trust implicitly. I shall alert them, quietly. Stay here as long as you think is necessary."
When Tsunade has left, Kakashi carefully knelt down beside the bed and tentatively reached for Sakura's limp hand.
oOoOoOo
Deep in her mind, Sakura and Inner Sakura sat together on a log that had fallen across a small stream. The two women kicked their legs free, enjoying the soft, sunny summer day, the chirping of the birds, and the wind softly caressing their skin as it ran invisible tendrils through their hair.
But they were not here to seek peace, but to ask questions.
"I can't help but feel as though we're missing something," Inner Sakura said. "This is too big to involve just us. We're not supposed to be key players."
"Catalysts," Sakura replied. "We help things change, but are supposed to be completely independent of the process."
"Precisely. But we're forgetting something…"
"What could that be?"
"…A face," Inner Sakura said finally. "There's supposed to be a face – oh, think! Think back to the day before we left! Surely there must be something there! Some clue – some, some possibility that we haven't seen!"
Sakura sadly shook her head. "I don't know. I've been over it so many times and I can't find anything."
"You might have, but I've been out of commission for some time. I'll just start working on it. We ought to get somewhere with one of us always on board."
oOoOoOo
Tsume wasn't too surprised when Kabuto's journey brought them directly to Sakura's home. The door was unlocked – which, of course, actually made sense. Anyone worth their salt as a ninja could pick the lock or sneak into someone's home. People who would do it to the home of Tsunade's apprentice were not too bright and would probably not be missed.
Mostly, she considered, as she caught sight of her reflection in Sakura's glass cupboard display of fine china.
"What are we looking for here?" Tsume asked.
Kabuto said nothing as he made a beeline for the refrigerator. Tsume snorted, disapprovingly. "If you're hungry, I've got food at my place I'm willing to give you – there's really no need to raid Sakura's food stores."
Kabuto opened the fridge. "Ah," he said cheerfully, ducking his head and peering within, "but do you have sweetmustard and turkey?"
Kiba's face flashed through her vision, his words drifting across her ears – honestly, mom, I haven't been home to eat because Sakura's got this huge turkey to finish off and both Naruto and Kakashi are on missions, and you've always taught me that gentlemen help the ladies out! — and Tsume suddenly felt tempted to tell Kabuto that she didn't have turkey, but she did have a boot ready to go up his ass – just as she had told Kiba.
Without further explanation, Kabuto began to pull supplies from the fridge, sniffing and pinching off bits for a taste. "Haruna-san was undoubtedly taking some sort of narcotic for pain – search the house for any and bring it to me."
Tsume studied Kabuto for a moment. "Laced?"
"Possibly." Kabuto eyed Kuromaru for a moment.
"Don't even think about it, bub," Tsume growled in warning. He looked at her, and she flashed him a smile that was more teeth than anything else. "My dog ain't going to be used for taste-testing."
Kabuto smiled as he dipped a finger into a rice pudding, and then deliberately slipped it between his lips. "Right," he said cheerfully with a firm nod of his head, turning back to the fridge.
With a disgusted shake of her head, Tsume wandered off to search through Sakura's medicine cabinet – now, just how the hell did she manage to lose a good chunk of her roof and … and why were the stairs leading up bring her to the basement? "I'll never get anywhere in this mad house," Tsume muttered. She turned to Kuromaru. "Find something that smells like cough syrup," she commanded.
Kuromaru snorted and sniffed at the carpet. Tail wagging, he traced up and down the hall before his head lifted and he loped away. Tsume followed after, her senses extending to more than just the house. They eventually wound up in Sakura's bathroom. As Kuromaru wandered off, his nose in the air, Tsume flung open the medicine cabinet and roamed through its assorted supplies. She sniffed at various bottles, dismissing those with the stale scent of an object that hadn't been touched for some time. Those with a scent extending at least a week ago were selected.
A bottle of aspirin, some antacids, and a mouthwash.
As Tsume was picking these objects up, Kuromaru entered the bathroom, growling softly. She crouched low, placing a light hand upon his head and scratching his ears. "Whatcha got there?" she asked, carefully gripping the bottle he had gripped between his teeth. As he released it and backed away a few steps, Tsume thought she caught Kiba's scent. She automatically glanced over her shoulder, and felt acute disappointment and grief when she realized once again she would never see him standing behind, bent half-way over and peering curiously at what had caught her attention.
After riding out the grief, Tsume twisted off the bottle's cap. She took a deep sniff of its contents – morphine. She knew that scent, and was as familiar with it as many other ninjas. But there was something off about it – something that hinted on just this side of taint. She held the bottle out to Kuromaru. "What do you think?" she asked.
Kuromaru whined and sniffed twice. He sneezed and rubbed his nose against one foreleg.
"You and me both, hon. It's tainted with something it's not supposed to have." Tsume studied the bottle for a moment, tapping one pointed nail against the glass. "I think we found what we came looking for." She straightened, wincing at the grating pops in her knees. She was supposed to retire in two years, have her next and final child in three years, and settle down to enjoy raising pups – human and canine. It was a miracle in and of itself that she was still a healthy, relatively whole ninja still on active-duty at… fortysome years of age. Yeah.
"You just had to go and fuck up my plans with your death, didn't you?" she growled at the empty air.
There was a soft brush of nothingness against her cheek. "Oh, fine. Be that way," she muttered as she left. A few moments passed before she whipped around the corner and looked wide-eyed at the little bathroom. It was empty, and she brushed wetness from the corner of her eyes. Kuromaru whined and poked his nose against the palm of her hand. "I'll be fine," she said.
When she returned to the kitchen with the bottle of morphine firmly in her hands, Kabuto looked up from the large bowl sitting on the table.
"I think," Kabuto began.
"Hey, you know," Tsume said, determined to speak first.
"I found it," they spoke at the same time. They stared at one another. "You too?"
Kabuto wordlessly held his hand out. Tsume handed him the bottle. He deftly removed the cap with a single twist of his wrist and sniffed. His eyes widening, he dabbed a droplet onto his pinky and lifted it to his lips.
He gently replaced the cap and firmly set the bottle onto the table beside the large bowl. His eyes, when he finally looked at Tsume, were filled with dismay. "Well, shit."
That, Tsume figured, probably did not bode well for Sakura.
oOoOoOo
Sasuke was very good at questioning – a pinch from the darker recesses of his mind for some more creative methods, a dollop of sentences Kabuto oh-so-casually mentioned in their conversations, and a splash of his very own sadism. Sasuke could cook together just about anything to get what he wanted.
Revenge had a very bitter taste, but necessity? Necessity can sometimes taste like poisoned candy.
The blood reached no further than his stiff hands and tongue. The tongue he merely tucked back into his mouth and savored the tangy, slightly bitter, taste of blood, but his hands he stiffly wiped off on a clean corner of one of the enemy's flakjackets. That accomplished, he turned and walked over to the base of a tree. Craning his neck back, he looked upward into the green depths and said softly, "Have you seen enough?"
The leaves rustled as Ino dropped out of them. Her face was stoic and her eyes haunted as she crossed her arms challengingly before herself. "I didn't think you ought to be left on your own," she said warily.
"I didn't think you'd trust your students with Naruto," Sasuke replied with the same stoic expression.
"Don't worry – Gina will keep Naruto in line." It was easier to speak of Naruto and the others, rather than dwelling on the implications of what he knew – and what he knew Ino had overheard.
One of Sasuke's eyebrows went up in mild surprise. "You trust a whore more than you trust Naruto?"
Ino's eyebrows both shot upward. "If someone like Gina could somehow put up with Kiba without the two of them killing one another for as long as they were together and were as successful as a team, do you honestly believe that Naruto could pose a problem?"
Sasuke just looked pointedly at Ino.
"Well," she relented slightly, "this is Naruto we're talking about. But don't worry," she hastened to add, "because Naruto is very good with children and knows full well how fragile they are in comparison."
"You shelter those children too much," Sasuke said as he launched himself into the trees. Ino said nothing in reply as she hurried after him. He deliberately kept his pace a little too fast and a little too headlong for Ino to follow comfortably, forcing her to maintain a difficult speed – one that should prevent talk.
Ino gritted her teeth and kept in step with him, and still somehow managed to find the breath to speak. He supposed it must be a female thing, but mostly because Orochimaru and Kabuto hadn't exactly encouraged him to study women. "You're gotten darker since you've left."
Sasuke didn't think that deserved the dignity of a reply.
Ino seemed to sense such. "I mean – gah!" She tugged at her hair in frustration. "Don't you wonder why I came after you?" she demanded pointedly. Sasuke had, and really hoped it had nothing to do with a long-time crush of hers. She was, after all, a married woman, and he had absolutely no interest in going up against her husband in any form of combat. He had heard from Kiba that Neji was very possessive and that it stung like a bitch to get on the other end of the man's blows. "It's because," Ino continued blithely, as if she knew Sasuke was trying to ignore her, "of Prometheus."
Sasuke very nearly slipped off a branch and would have tumbled most gracelessly to the ground below if it weren't for the fact that his skills were so honed. "What?" The sibilant voice chuckled at his surprise, but he smothered it beneath another layer of darkness.
"A legend from another culture – I found it, and many others of its kind, to be fascinating – does it ring a bell?" Ino asked hopefully.
Sasuke resolutely shook his head.
Ino sighed and grumbled something under her breath about uncultured idiots and how she could swear there was a secret society of men somewhere who did their best to make sure they stayed uncultured.
"Prometheus was a Titan who stole fire away from the gods," Ino began. "It was a gift to mankind that, according to mythology, was also created by Prometheus. Well, there's a long story about the feud between Prometheus and Zeus – one of the gods. In the end, Zeus chained Prometheus to a cliffside where an eagle consumed Prometheus' liver daily, but it would regenerate overnight. Well, some time later, Prometheus was rescued by this guy named Hercules, but that's a different story for a different time.
"My point is, Sasuke, the reason I came after you is because you remind me of Prometheus. You're chained to a cliffside and you're being consumed, and it doesn't matter if you're regenerating or not. You're, you're damned," Ino finished softly.
The sibilant voice laughed again, soft and velvet in the darkness. A flashing image – fingers wrapped around a delicate throat, bloody welts rising from where his nails pierced the fair skin, and fingers clawing desperately at his arms as the rosy mouth opened and closed, begging for air – and Sasuke locked it deeper still, wishing that Ino had ignored any supportive heroics she might have considered and stayed with Naruto.
"But I'm not your Hercules," Ino continued on assuredly. "I've already got my own Prometheus to care for. You'll just have to find your own, or become your own."
And what, Sasuke wondered (almost unhappily, if he could remember what to compare being unhappy with, since it really meant nothing to him in the end), had been the point of this.