Isekai

Author's note: Lalala! I know you guys weren't happy with two origin-related stories, but too bad; they were important to the plot! Also I know everyone wanted to get back to the present, and this…is technically in the present, but, takes place in Konoha :o I hope you guys are okay with this! I added in lemony content to make up for the fact that it doesn't pick up where I left off yet…I hope you guys like this chapter, as I am a little insecure about it. Please review! It means a lot to me and I want to know what you guys think of where the story is going. This chapter presents a MAJOR plot point.

Chapter Eighteen: Perfect Circle

Sasuke did not like being blindfolded, and he did not like being separated from his wife. He also was not fond of being hungry, and cherished showers above most other things. Therefore his present situation was getting on his nerves a bit. He couldn't remove the cloth covering his eyes, because he couldn't see (obviously) to undo the rather complicated knot at the back of his head. Another problem was that his eyes were in excruciating pain, and it was hard to concentrate on anything else through the pain. He was also fairly sure he was on the verge of starvation, as he was weaker than even after his spinal injury, and his stomach made ungodly noises every few minutes.

Great, maybe I'm in Milia. They're all starving to death there, he thought unceremoniously, and grinned despite the pain. Sakura would kill me for thinking that. Her exact birthplace and her parents were unknown, but due to her bright pink hair and pale skin, it was pretty obvious she was from Milia. She'd also been raised in an overcrowded orphanage there.

He'd been here for a while as far as he could tell, though with no human interaction, food, sight, or bathroom privileges, it was hard to tell time. He couldn't feel the weight of his usual watch on his wrist, and when he tried to determine his surroundings, he came to the uncomfortable conclusion that he was mostly naked, except for a pair of loose pants held up by rope and rather primitive sandals.

"Hello?" he called out, surprised by how his voice cracked slightly as though he were still in the clutches of puberty. Oh hell no, he thought. One round of puberty was enough for me, thanks.

"Ah, little Sasuke-kun…" a silky voice hissed from a few feet away. Sasuke jumped.

"Who the hell are you? Where am I?" he demanded. The person laughed softly and Sasuke attempted to glare before remembering he was blindfolded, and every muscle twitch of his eyes hurt like hell. "You sound like a pedophile," he added, noting the way his rear end hurt and hoping upon hope that that was because of sitting on stone for hours and hours.

"Sasuke-kun, you have gotten so rude. And just yesterday, you were so euphoric about the transplant…" something was stroking his hair, and Sasuke jumped back, trying to kick whatever was touching him.

"Transplant? What the hell?" He scuttled back and banged his head against more stone and yelped in pain.

"…Your brother's eyes, Sasuke." Whoever this person was, they sounded irritated and impatient now. "You had your brother's eyes transplanted so you'd be more powerful. I must tell Madara of this, your lack of recollection is more than troubling…" he heard the sound of pacing, and he nearly choked on his own spit.

"Transplanted? Itachi's eyes?" he sputtered. The person was tsking now.

"This is no good. Something must have gone wrong. You seem to be remembering nothing. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember?"

Sasuke paused.

"Shutting down a reactor with my wife," he finally answered carefully. There was a chilling silence before the person spoke again.

"…What is a reactor? You don't have a wife. Unless you mean Karin…?"

"No, asshole, Sakura!" Sasuke was panicking now. He didn't have Sakura, and he had just put his brother's eyes into his own. Calm down. It must simply be a nightmare. Take a deep breath like Sakura taught you.

"…And now you think you are married to your old teammate. This is…disturbing. Stay there. I shall summon Madara. Troubling, very troubling." There was the sound of smoke being released and then he could tell he was alone, wherever he was. Well, even if it's a nightmare, nothing good can come of staying here. With more fervor than ever, he worked at removing the blindfold, working through the pain, and finally, the fabric fluttered down to his legs, revealing darkness. Slowly, shapes began revealing themselves. He was in a cave of some sort. Where was the opening?

Can't you not feel pain in dreams? His eyes hurt even more now that the gentle pressure from the blindfold was gone, and he struggled to stay upright, leaning against the wall of the cavern as he stumbled, gasping in pain. This was definitely no nightmare. Maybe I'm in Milia and they took me captive and brainwashed me? Fear seized his heart but propelled him forward. I have to find Sakura. I have to find Sakura. He pushed against the wall and rocks tumbled forward, bruising him but bringing in painfully bright sunlight. This time he cried out in pain, shielding his eyes as they adjusted slowly.

He knew there was no time to lose; he began trundling through soft, tall grass. His eyes still ached, but fear of getting caught again by whoever that person was compounded with fear for what might have happened to Sakura sent adrenaline coursing through his body. What if…? She couldn't be dead. They hadn't anticipated the reactor mission going this badly at all. Sandy soil and tall grass gave way to clumps of trees, and suddenly he was running through a cool, shaded forest, the leaves dripping with moisture in the high humidity. His lungs burning, he finally slowed to a stop, bent over, struggling for air. Hiding himself within a thicket, he caught his breath, and looked down. Was it possible that he looked…smaller? Maybe he'd been starving for longer than he'd thought? But no, then all his muscle tone would have been gone too. His bare chest was narrower as it had been when he was about seventeen, and there was almost no hair on his chest. He reached up, expecting a beard-he wasn't hairy, but he certainly needed to shave at least once a week-but his jaw was smooth and entirely hairless. Okay, now I'm freaked out. He was much tanner than he was used to, despite being locked in a cave, and there were scars on him that he didn't recognize. They looked old, too old to have developed for whatever time had passed since his mission. They looked like they were at least a year or two old.

His pants were loose, dark grey pants, tucked into black strips of cloth that had been wrapped around his calves, leading to leather sandals. What the hell am I wearing? They were held up by a thick rope. Hasn't anyone ever heard of, you know, buttons? He had never seen clothing like this before in his life.

Dizziness and nausea gripped him and he stood up shakily again, compelled to run. He had no idea where he was, but was coming to the conclusion that this was too real to be a dream. The only way he could quell his fears was to keep running. Through the woods he ran, nearly choking for air but too scared to stop. He was hungrier and more tired than he had ever been in his entire life, but something more primitive moved him: survival. He could eat and sleep later, but now, he had to run if he wanted to have any chance of living. As true physical exhaustion hit him, he concentrated, and the strangest thing was, he was able to keep going. His strides became longer, and more power was packed into each step, until he was nearly airborne. He squinted, trying to calm the pain raging in his eyes, and then, the same strange liquid feeling spread to his eyes, and he was able to see everything as though it were happening in slow-motion…even though he knew he was sprinting faster than he had ever sprinted in his life. His lungs no longer burned for air, and suddenly it was quite comfortable to be sprinting like this. Easy, even. He tried focusing more on each stride, and then suddenly he really was airborne, climbing up a tree without the use of his hands and then leaping from branch to branch. It was dreamlike and yet felt totally normal to his muscles, as though he'd been doing it for years. It was like being in a different universe, in a world where he used magic to run and jump. …Is it possible to be sent to other worlds? He had no satisfactory answer. The only thing I can do is find Sakura.

After hours of running, the sun was setting, and he came to the edge of the woods. For all I know I could have been running in circles, he thought, barely winded as he crouched on a tree branch. He was looking down upon a settlement of tents, apparently medical tents for wounded. I guess there must be a war here…. He would have just burst into the tents to ask for help-now that he was no longer moving, he had no distraction from the pain-but what if these medics were on the side of his captors? It was chilly now and he wished for a shirt. Sakura… her name was like a shibboleth back to his own world, and he rested against the trunk of the tree, letting his body rest as he watched the medics flutter in and out. Was she here too? What the hell had happened? Was this all a dream? A hallucination?

They had had no idea things would turn out like this. He clenched his fists as he recalled the condition they were hoping Sakura was in. This would have been her last mission for a while, but if she was in anything like Sasuke's state, it would all be ruined. They'd been keeping track of her cycle, and she was beginning to take more instructing hours and fewer missions. The plan was to ease her into a more sedentary lifestyle, to prepare her body and mind. They hadn't done a test yet, because they were afraid to check too soon and jinx anything.

But if she was as battered as he, there was no way she could still be pregnant. She'd only have been a few weeks pregnant; the tiny bundle of cells would be too fragile to withstand starvation and dehydration like this. Hot angry tears pricked his eyes and he angrily wiped them away. They had been so foolish to take this stupid mission when Sakura might have been pregnant. Why did I let her? I'm a horrible husband.

He traveled for days, stopping only in the dead of night to break into shops and steal food. He didn't recognize much of the food he stole, but he was so hungry, he didn't care. He had also stolen a swath of fabric for a blanket, and used it as a bag to store his food. He wasn't naive enough to think that he could just go from village to village, stealing enough food to get by indefinitely, and he also wanted to have food for Sakura in case he found her. His eyes still ached, but he had become habituated to the pain and only noticed it when he first woke up from the short naps he took intermittently. One night when he broke into a shop, he caught his reflection in a piece of glass and was shocked. He'd been straining his eyes to look for possible people he might run into, and now he saw, very clearly even in the night, that his eyes glowed red with three black flecks revolving around the pupil. He was filled with horror. His suspicions that he might be in another world were confirmed by this, as well as the fact that he looked exactly as he had when he was seventeen, though leaner and tanner and more scarred. The man in the cave had confirmed that Sakura was in this world though; apparently she had been his old teammate.

It was another few days before he found her. He had come upon a new encampment of tents and decided to rest on a branch, high up and overlooking the entire clearing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of pink. He peered through the leaves and watched as Sakura left one of the tents, seemingly to walk around the encampment by herself. She was hugging herself tightly and Sasuke's jaw dropped. She looked like a completely different person. She was so thin it was scary, and her hair hung in uneven, careless clumps around her face. She wore a shapeless hunter green vest over a black shirt and baggy black pants. She looked so small, so helpless. He was about to jump down when he saw another figure follow her out of the tents, and he realized it was Neji, though he didn't look like himself. He too was thinner but more muscular, and was wearing an outfit similar to Sakura's. Hungrily he watched Neji come up behind Sakura and grab her. He was interrogating her about something, but Sasuke couldn't hear what it was. Finally, he backed off and returned to his tent, leaving Sakura alone. Sasuke waited a few more minutes before dropping to the ground. By now he was no longer surprised at his ability to do things like that, and he ducked out of the trees, covered Sakura's mouth before she could let out a scream, and dragged her back into the woods with him. When she realized who he was, she threw her arms around him, her entire body quivering. For a few minutes they stayed like that.

"Where are we?" she whispered, pulling away enough to look up at him. In the bits of moonlight, he could see that her face was so smudged with dirt that her tears made clean streaks of white down her hollowed cheeks. Now he found himself unable to stop, and he clutched her tightly to him. She felt so bony; the only thing on her bones was muscle. "Your eyes… they look red..." she added, reaching up and touching calloused fingertips to the skin around his eyes. He could only nod, for fear that if he tried to speak he'd cry too. This was clearly not just a dream, and they had lost so much. They stood there, holding each other tightly, blending in with the night.

"We have to get you away from here," he murmured into her hair, and she nodded.

"I don't think it survived," she said, instinctively reaching down to her abdomen. He picked up her hand and laced their fingers together.

"We'll think about it later. For now we have to run. I think I'm not supposed to have gotten away."

"They're after you. You're the cause of this war," she agreed, and they began creeping across the edge of the camp. As soon as they were in the trees on the other side, they began running, until they could no longer run anymore. There was a small village that reminded them both of Verda Linda, the village outside of Gaulin that they had planned to move to after the baby was born. Wordlessly they agreed to find a place to stay here, and after some poking around, found a shed behind a house that didn't look like it was used too often. They hid inside and huddled together on soft bags of some kind of seed.

"I'm so happy you found me," Sakura whispered, pulling off her vest to use as a pillow for them both. Sasuke undid the fabric and let packets of food fall out of it. He stacked them on the ground beside them; they could eat later. He covered them both with the fabric.

"Dumb luck. I woke up in a cave, blindfolded," Sasuke explained, lying down next to Sakura. "I think…there's some kind of…"

"Magic? I know. I had no idea how to heal this one guy but as soon as I thought of it, I was able to do it. Weird."

"Yeah."

Sakura snuggled closer to him, resting her head on his chest. "And I think we're younger here too."

"Maybe we didn't lose the baby?" Hope sparked within them both and they smiled at each other. Relief came after that, and even though he was filthy, Sasuke moved closer and kissed Sakura on the mouth. Once again he forgot about his pain and rolled over on top of her, relishing the way her fingers wound their way into his hair. He forgot all about their strange new situation as he became lost in the kiss, letting his lips leave hers and moving to her neck. He pulled her to a sitting position as he slipped the black shirt off her. Her small breasts were bound in white wrappings. Without asking for consent, he tugged at them until they gave way, and traced his mouth downwards, roving over her torso. Still, his lust was pierced by worry at how underfed she was. He heard her let out a gasp of pleasure and he forgot about the worry, moving lower and hooking his fingers in her pants. Moonlight streamed through the single tiny window in the shed, panels of silvery light falling on them both, illuminating Sakura in a pale glow. He pushed her pants away and let her untie the rope around his waist, pressing his lips against hers and effectively pushing her down again. His clothing fell away and they moved together, before falling asleep under the fabric, curled up together in a perfect circle.

"What the HELL?" A loud voice jarred Sakura from the first deep sleep she'd had since she'd gotten to this strange world, and blearily she opened her eyes, blinking to adjust to the bright sunlight. Her body ached from sleeping in an odd position, and soon it became clear that there were people in this shed other than her and Sasuke, she was naked and only covered by a thin piece of fabric, and the people were three men standing in the doorway. Rubbing her eyes, she looked over to find the President of Fleuria, Kakashi (her fellow instructor at Gaulin), and a dark-haired man who bore a striking resemblance to Sasuke. Before she could process this, Sasuke woke up as well.

"S-sakura-chan!" The president of Fleuria stammered, his face reddening as he took in the sight before him. Sakura squealed, hiding herself more under the blankets, and Sasuke glowered, drawing her closer to him. "Sakura, did he hurt you? What's going on?" he demanded. Kakashi turned and looked away, and absently Sakura wondered why he wore a mask that covered his mouth. The only person who did not seem horrified by her state of dress was the dark haired man, who simply stared at them impassively.

"Fraternizing with the enemy," he said coolly, and unsheathed a long sword. "Thanks for catching him for us, Hag-"

"Oh no you don't," Naruto interrupted, swiftly kicking the sword out of the man's hands. "That's my best friend you want to chop up, Sai," he warned. He turned to the pair again, still clearly in shock. "Just…how long has this been going on, Sakura-chan?" he sounded so mournful that Sakura's heart broke even though she didn't know this man.

"Just this once," she said timidly. She had gathered from being in the medic tent that Sasuke planned on destroying his home village as an act of revenge, and was going to disturbing lengths to achieve his goal. Apparently they had been teammates and he had been her childhood crush. "I just…"

"He must have used the Sharingan," Kakashi clarified suddenly. "Sakura, did he use the Sharingan?"

"I don't know." What the hell was the sharingan? She watched as the men glanced between each other. The dark haired man's eyes returned to her almost at once, and Sakura's cheeks flushed as she pulled the fabric closer to her body.

"I have special instructions for these two," he said, returning to his sword. "Naruto, Kakashi-sensei, please do not stop me. The Uchiha must be detained and Ugly needs to be taken in for questioning." He never once looked at Sasuke. "Get dressed and please do not try to escape," he ordered before ushering Naruto and Kakashi out of the shed. When he closed the door behind him, Sakura's legs began to shake and she had to brace herself by gripping the windowsill.

"It'll be okay," Sasuke murmured in reassurance. Sakura nodded. Would Sasuke be imprisoned? Killed? "They can't keep us apart again. I'll find you as many times as I need to," he added.

"I'll do whatever I must do to save you from being held prisoner," she agreed. "For now, let's do as they say." They dressed swiftly and, with dignity, exited the shed. More people had arrived in the meantime, and Sakura and Sasuke recognized Neji from the group. In the blink of an eye, they had chained Sasuke. A group of men took him, and in a poof of smoke, they were gone. Sakura couldn't hide her shaking, and the shame from being found in such a way made her face burn. She looked down even as the man from before gripped her upper arm. Wordlessly, they too disappeared in a poof of smoke, though Sakura caught all eyes on her, wide with shock and repugnance, before she disappeared.

Before she could do anything, she found herself being carried by the man as he ran through the treetops at an incredible pace.

"What will they do to Sasuke?" she asked. He said nothing and she took that as a cue to not speak further. When they did stop, it was hours later and they were in a dark room, with no windows and no furnishings except for a bed in the corner. He slid the door shut and locked it, gesturing for her to sit on the bed.

"My name is Sai," he began, moving to stand in front of her. "I do not know what will happen to Sasuke for now. He will live, however." Sakura released a breath and relaxed. Still, her brain hitched on something and she froze. She knew she was supposed to know this man, but if he had bothered with introductions, he knew something the others didn't.

"…How did you know I'm not the Sakura everyone thinks I am?" she demanded, standing up and bracing herself. Sai looked at her levelly.

"Because I'm the one who sent you here."