DNON
A/N-Thank you, Sakura's Unicorn for help editing and splitting up chapters. I know this one's a bear. You're a dear.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to drop a review—I appreciate each and every one. You all make me happy to write stories.
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Woohoo! I'm out of town, trialing my dog Trammel this weekend in AKC and got all first places with perfect scores. My doggie rocks! We finished two titles—even though I'm sick as a dog, literally. I got online long enough to post this and then I'm draggin myself off to sleep. Enjoy,
K&K
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Gravity
Chapter 21 Unexpectedly Expecting
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Karin visited Sakura a week later at the outpost. Sakura invited her for dinner at the only inn the village had. They talk pleasantly about Konoha and over dessert Sakura asked if Karin found the criminal she'd been looking for.
"Well, you know me, Sakura. I tend to take my time when it comes to man-hunting." Karin pushed her glasses up her nose and brushed her long hair back from her face. "I'm just not cut out to do hard work."
Sakura laughed.
"Hey!" Karin put her hands on her hips in mock protest. "At least I'm not afraid to admit it, not like some of those other slackers." She waved her hand through the air. "Look at Kakashi or Shikamaru. They're the same and they don't get as much flack for it as I do—probably because they're men."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. It's just funny to hear you admit it."
"Could you just imagine what they would say about one of us laying around watching clouds or reading porn all the time?"
Laughing hard at the imagery, Sakura called the waitress for their bill and they went outside for a short walk to enjoy the night air.
"Do you like living in the village, Karin?"
"It's certainly different from other places I've lived."
"It must be hard living in so many different places," Sakura said as they neared her bungalow. "Konoha is all I've ever known. This is the first time I've been away on my own."
Karin shrugged, "You get used to being on the road. So, do you think you'll keep doing these missions away from Konoha? It seems to suit you well."
Sakura sighed and sat on the porch railing, swinging one leg. "To tell you the truth, it's kind of lonely."
"Sometimes," Karin nodded in agreement. "But working takes your mind off things."
"Yeah." Sakura nodded sadly, looking forlorn.
"You should take advantage of the fact that you're young and strong." Karin patted her shoulder encouragingly. "See the world. Konoha will still be there when you get back."
"Alone?"
"If you want, I'll go with you. We could watch each other's back. It's not like I've got anything better to do." She waved her hand nonchalantly. "I could do this in any country. There's nothing holding me to Konoha anymore. Sasuke's an emotional iceberg. Suigetsu's a jerk and Juugo's-"
"Sweet."
"Yeah, too sweet for my taste—plus, he always has animals hanging around, like that old fairy tale with the princess and the dwarves."
Sakura laughed out loud at the entertainingly apt description. "Too bad he can't get them to clean the house."
Karin giggled, "But they do leave little presents all around. We just never noticed it until we came to Konoha to live in houses. That was a real treat to step into first thing in the morning, getting out of bed."
They both burst out laughing.
Karin stretched lazily. "Well, I should be getting back to camp. I don't want them to send out a search party. Without me, they'll never find me," she joked. "Why don't you come out to camp for breakfast tomorrow and let me return the favor. The guys from River Country that I'm working with aren't such bad fellows."
"Well I don't have to work tomorrow." Her taicho had been haranguing her to take a day or two off. "I could stay out and help you search."
Karin shrugged. "If you want but I warn you, it will be boring—hours of endless walking and probably not even a whiff of a bad guy."
"That's ok. I could use a good hike. I've been sleeping in a little too much lately. Gotta stay in fighting shape, you know."
"Sounds like a date then." She winked exaggeratedly. "I'll see you in the morning, Haruno."
"Goodnight, Karin. Be careful going back."
"Nobody sneaks up on me, Haruno. Sensor-nin, remember?"
"See you bright and early." Sakura smiled.
"Oh, no way! Not too early. I won't even get up till an hour after the sun."
Sakura went back to her place. She really had enjoyed the evening. Karin was different when she wasn't around her team. Of course, the same could be said about herself—she hadn't yelled at or pounded on anyone in over four weeks. She almost missed having someone call her ugly or make inane comments about her body or be forced into breaking up fights about whether ramen was better than all other foods.
Maybe at the end of the month when her report was due, she'd make a short stop back into Konoha just to say hello to the boys—only if she could avoid Sasuke. Despite Karin's sad news, their last night together was still fresh and perfect in her mind and she didn't want to mar it. She wasn't ready to face his latest rejection just yet. Sasuke did go on a lot of ANBU missions, though, so there was a good chance he wouldn't even be around. She could bring in the monthly report to Tsunade, stay for a night, and leave the next day. Having that decided, she already felt better, knowing she would see her friends in a few weeks. She'd tell Karin in the morning and Karin could give Ino a heads up about her visit.
Sakura curled up in bed and snuggled under the blankets. Recently, she had become like a cat—constantly wanting to catch a quick nap during the day and never wanting to get up at daybreak. All she wanted to do between work lately was just eat and sleep. A morning jog to Karin's camp ought to stir up her blood a bit, she thought. She couldn't get too used to this lazy lifestyle. Tsunade would be teed off if she lost her edge.
When Sakura rose the next morning, the sun was just peeking over the horizon. She jumped out of bed and felt a touch of queasiness.
'Probably just my body rejecting the idea of a morning run,' she thought, yawning.
She got dressed and put on her shoes before grabbing an apple. She went to her captain's door to tell him why she was leaving, but he was already out for the day. She told one of her students that she was playing hooky and to tell the others—she figured she'd catch up with her taichou later. Sakura was sure he wouldn't mind her taking a day off—he was always telling her she spent too much time inside anyway.
She munched on the fruit while she stretched her muscles to warm them up and, once she was done eating, she headed out.
Sakura felt pretty good once she got moving. After a while, she moved into the trees to really stretch her legs and give her chakra a little work out. As per orders from her shishou, she'd barely used chakra since coming to River Country. She thought that Tsunade had probably been right in ordering her not to. After giving so much to Sasuke, her chakra recovery time had taken a huge hit and she needed to slowly rebuild her reserves and heal her own body.
It wasn't long before she came up on the landmarks Karin mentioned. She found the campsite without much trouble and called out when she neared.
That was when she heard Karin scream.
Sakura was instantly on alert. Now she noticed from the smell that while there was food cooking, it was beginning to burn, and Karin's teammates were nowhere to be seen. She followed the sound of Karin's screaming and found the woman lying on the ground, bloody-faced with half her clothes ripped off and a large man leaning over her—there were two more men lying face down not far away.
"Shut up, bitch!" The man slapped Karin and Sakura saw red.
"Hey! Get off her!" Sakura ran toward him and he jumped off the redhead.
"Oh ,look. Two little girlies for me to play with."
Sakura laced her fist with chakra and punched, but the man was quick and dodged her. Her fist hit the tree behind him, shattering it.
"Oooh. This one's got some moves." He laughed like a perverted goon. "You wanna play house, too?"
"Sakura, watch out!" Karin warned.
Sakura told Karin to stay back while she sized up the man. He was big—almost as tall as Juugo. He had speed and he looked strong, but he didn't seem very intelligent.
"Karin, go find the rest of your team for backup. I'll take care of him."
"Be careful, Sakura. They're close, I feel it. I'll be right back."
Sakura took care to use her chakra selectively in fighting the man. It still wasn't back to normal, and she didn't want to run to low before reinforcements came.
She flash-stepped around the clearing and threw kunai at him from every direction. He blocked them all, but as he used his own knife to hit the last one, she flashed directly in from of him and hit him with a chakra-filled uppercut that sent him skyward. She finished when he came back down with a bone-jarring hit that sent him straight through the middle of several good-sized trees.
Karin returned just as she watched him fall on his face unconscious.
"Oh, Sakura," she hugged her tightly. "I don't know what would have happened if you didn't come to save me. Thank you!" Karin took both of Sakura's hands in her own and briefly held them before bringing them down to her sides and swiftly pushing back.
Instantly two, cold, metal cuffs clicked around Sakura's wrists.
As Karin cackled with callous glee, Sakura tried to raise her arms, but there was a bar connecting the cuffs behind her back. She tried to break them, but something in the strange metal was cutting her off completely from her chakra-enhanced strength.
She turned and there stood the man she had beaten. No, wait, he was still on the ground—there were two of them. She looked back again and the knocked out clone behind her dispersed, along with the other two clones lying prone around the campsite. The real perpetrator touched his tender jaw as he released his goonish henge to reveal who he truly was.
The head of the Rising Sun Brigade—Sasuke had described him in detail to Gaara before they left Suna. This man and his band had almost killed Sasuke.
"Missy, you sure can throw a punch. Feels like you broke my frickin' jaw."
"Karin," she hissed. "What's the meaning of this?"
"Come on, Sakura. How stupid can you be?" Karin ripped off the torn edge of her shirt and wiped blood from her face that clearly wasn't her own. Now that Sakura saw her up close, she could see there wasn't even a single scratch on the redhead. "I told you, nobody sneaks up on me," she scoffed. "I warned you before to stay away from my Sasuke-kun. You just couldn't do it, could you?"
'What the hell?' Sakura thought—Karin had to be crazy. "What are you talking about?" Sakura was trying to edge away from them both while she spoke. She had to get away—back to her base. She thought she could outrun them in the woods, even with her hands tied. "I left Sasuke's house. I left Konoha."
"Not before getting knocked up with my baby!"
"What?" Sakura froze in shock and the man snagged her by the barred cuffs so she couldn't escape—not that she could do more than stare at the crazy woman in front of her at the moment.
"Gag and blindfold her." Karin ordered while she henged herself to look like Sakura. "I'll go back to her camp and tell them that Sakura—" She paused and laughed wickedly. "I mean I have to go back to Konoha for a while. I've just received a summons from my Hokage." Sakura's own green eyes flashed at her in malice before looking around the trashed clearing. "Make this mess disappear before I get back. We've got to hurry and deliver this package to its new owner."
"Karin!" Sakura, finally brought out of her daze by Karin's cold, calculated, cruelness, was beginning to panic. She continued to look for an avenue to escape while she kept Karin talking. "What are you talking about? We are both Konoha citizens, loyal to Fire Country. You can't do this!" She tried to walk toward the girl, but the man behind her lifted her cuffs up, making her rise on her toes and lean forward to keep her arms from dislocating. She struggled from his grip and he cuffed her, knocking her down and splitting her lip.
"Hey! Be careful, you twit!"
The man growled at Karin.
"Don't go damaging the package, you moron. I want my baby to be healthy." Sakura's doppelganger grinned evilly and jumped into the trees.
"Karin!" Sakura's bleeding mouth was tied with a scarf and a hood was placed over her head before she was picked up off the ground. She kicked the man holding her and he cursed and dropped her on the ground with a jarring thud.
He tied Sakura's knees and ankles together with rope before picking her up again. He hung her over a thick tree branch and she could hear him as he went about destroying signs of the campsite.
Sakura tried to break off the shackles behind her back, but she couldn't get her chakra to work at all. She tried to wriggle off of the limb, but had trouble. Finally, she swung forward and flipped around, so instead of coming down on her head, she landed on her tied-together feet. Being off balance forced her into a big, clumsy hop and she pitched forward, landing on her knees. Still blind, she tried to get her bearings while she fought with the rope around her knees and ankles so she could get away.
"Where do you think you're going? I'm not through with you yet," Karin's voice said behind Sakura before a hand chopped down on the back of her neck, knocking her unconscious.
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When she woke, there was something like a blanket encasing her entire body and they were moving swiftly. She felt the familiar surge and fall of tree hopping.
With her head covered, Sakura couldn't see if it was day or night. The only thing more struggling got her was that the sadistic bastard carrying her would stop avoiding obstacles, like tree limbs or brush that stood out in the path. He let it all hit her as he pushed past until she stopped thrashing and stayed still.
'Karin is absolutely insane if she believes I'm pregnant,' Sakura reasoned. 'I used the correct dosage of a reliable birth control before I left the village,' she thought, her analytical mind going over her actions in the lab precisely, as she had done so many times before with any lab-related work—she was completely methodical. 'It's not possible. I mixed that tonic myself. I know I took the correct dosage!'
'You have been exhibiting mild symptoms of early pregnancy,' her Inner reasoned. 'And Karin can see chakra signatures like you can punch a hole in a rock. She's flawless at it.'
'Even if it's true, what can she do? You can't transplant a fetus,' she argued with herself, 'I would be—' She counted, her diagnostic intellect calmly taking over. '—five weeks along. The baby would be tiny, not even an inch long—no bigger than a robin's egg. A full term baby needs at least thirty-two weeks gestation to have a fifty percent survival rate. Even then, it would weigh less than four pounds and probably need an incubator for weeks. With full use of my chakra, I could probably assure survival with my own skills at that age, and maybe Karin could too, but that is still twenty-six weeks away. How is Karin going to keep me hidden for twenty-six weeks?'
Suddenly, it hit her.
"Oh my God! I'm pregnant!"
Her hands immediately twitched, wanting to go to her abdomen and check, but the chakra cuffs locked behind her back prevented that. She drew her knees up, suddenly feeling extremely vulnerable. If the man carrying her dropped her…
She knew she was being unreasonable. Her body was more than enough cushion for a tiny, little fetus, but at the moment she felt very irrational.
"Sasuke!" she shouted through muffled lips.
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'Sasuke…I'm pregnant.'
The fear of actually having to say these words was overpowered by the impact of the success of this abduction—it gave her sickening chills. Sasuke might never even know the truth if Karin successfully killed her and took the baby. But could Karin actually seduce him? Would Sasuke forget her so easily? It hurt to even think about. The only comfort there was—and it was cold comfort indeed because it implied her own death—was that her child would end up in Sasuke's hands. That was if Karin didn't lose her mind completely first.
Tears began to trickle down her covered face and she ground her teeth on the scarf in frustration. Her and Sasuke's child. If she didn't think of something, it would be ripped from her body before she even got to meet it.
Sakura tried her best to stay alert to her surroundings, but her senses were blanketed and traveling for hours with the dark hood and the rhythmic rocking motion eventually lulled her to sleep. She was awakened when she was set down on the ground and Karin pulled the hood from her head.
"No one can hear you, so don't bother calling for help." She took the gag from Sakura's mouth. "Thirsty?"
"Yes," she croaked as she looked around. They were in the desert. Every way she looked was more sand. They were taking shelter in one of the natural outcroppings of sandstone located here and there on the barren landscape. It could only be Wind Country. Her internal clock told her that there was nowhere else they could have traveled so fast and the landscape was a little familiar. Why Wind Country?
"Karin, I don't think you know what you're doing. Even if I was pregnant—"
"Oh, you're pregnant all right. In fact, it's the only thing that's keeping you alive right now," Karin informed her. "That's right, you've got me to thank for saving you. If it wasn't for the deal I made for the child, the Rising Sun would have assassinated you and been done with it and I would have helped them."
"You can tell that I'm pregnant?"
"I would know Sasuke-kun's energy anywhere. Even as tiny as it is right now, Uchiha chakra is like no other."
"But what are you hoping to do? The child won't even viable until thirty-six weeks."
"Nice try, Sakura. I know it is thirty-two weeks and every week after that increases the baby's chance of survival. I'm sure I can keep the child alive at thirty-two weeks with my chakra gifts."
"But-"
"Shut up. You're not gonna fool me with any medical jargon. You think I didn't study before I picked you up? I know how to care for the baby—and you, of course, until it's time to kill you and take it."
Sakura closed her eyes and hung her head, trying to think.
"What? You're not gonna beg for your life? No? At least you'll have the reassurance of knowing Sasuke will raise his own child. But if you don't cooperate with me, I'll let you watch me kill the baby before I kill you. I can take a stillborn to Sasuke-kun. He'll believe it's ours and he'll feel so guilty, he'll marry me anyway."
"He didn't marry you before when you were pregnant. You told me yourself."
"I was never pregnant, stupid. I'm only doing this to get Sasuke-kun. It's the only chance we'll have to have a child and the Sharingan is an important bloodline trait."
Karin's tearful story about losing Sasuke's baby—it had all been a lie to gain her sympathy. And she'd been so insecure herself that she fell for Karin's story, hook, line and sinker. Sakura stared at Karin dolefully.
"He doesn't like you. Sasuke won't touch you."
"You keep telling yourself that, Sakura. I'll have my Sasuke and I'll kill you."
"But…if I cooperate…you promise you won't hurt Sasuke's baby." Sakura tried to appease Karin while she went over possible escape scenarios in her head.
"I'm not making any promises, but I'll try. If you try to fuck me over, there will be no second chances." Karin gave Sakura another drink. She turned to the man with her. "We'll leave in a minute for the safe-house." She turned back to Sakura. "It'll only be a few more hours then you'll get some food, too. We need to keep baby fed and happy." She patted Sakura's flat belly condescendingly.
Sakura was pissed at Karin's conceited attitude and her own stupidity. "They'll look for me," she sneered.
"Ha! You're kidding right? You begged to be sent away. Sasuke thinks you're on a long mission. They all do."
"You'll be caught and executed, Karin. If I don't report back to work at camp, they will know and send word to Konoha."
"Shows what you know. Your taichou thinks you just went back to Konoha for some emergency. I told him—henged as you, of course—that I got a summons from the Hokage and had to leave and wasn't sure when I could return. They told you to have a safe trip. They won't expect you back for weeks and by then, there will be no one who'll know where you went." Karin put her hands on her hips. "Face facts, Sakura. You are never going back. You just went missing nin."
Karin turned to her partner.
"Gag her and put the hood back on. We need to go past one more village without being seen and then out to the base. After that no one will ever see Haruno Sakura again."
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