26. Setting out

It shouldn't be possible. Judging from what Sasuke saw, when he looked out of the window, it was still in the middle of the night, so she couldn't possibly have woken up yet. Not after he hypnotised her. The first thought that came to his mind was of course that Madara had come to take away the only other member of the small circle he referred to as his family these days. But he couldn't imagine, or maybe it was that he didn't want to imagine that he could have taken her away right under his nose – right out of his arms even, without him noticing.

He slipped out of bed and tried to make sense of the situation, looking for any clues, for the missing piece of the puzzle that would make him understand what happened, while he had still been dead to the world. The room was a mosaic of shadows, but he couldn't make out any movement in the various shades of black. The storm had ceased and yet he still perceived the constant dripping of water. Though it did not come from the outside, but from the bathroom.

Unwilling to give in to relief yet, Sasuke approached the closed door. He couldn't help having a bad feeling about this, and his feelings were usually something he could rely on. Though not without fail. It was slowly, cautiously, that Sasuke entered the dim bathroom. He found the bathtub full to the brim, the light drizzle dripping out of the faucet creating concentric waves on the otherwise smooth water surface.

There was no foam, but nevertheless he couldn't see what was inside the tub. The only thing that gave away that there was a person inside was a crown of hair, fanned out in all directions across the opaque water surface like a black sun.

Without any cognisance of how he got there, Sasuke found himself crouching before the white porcelain tub, his arms to his elbows in the water. It was cold, surprisingly so, and his hands raking through the water did not encounter anything solid, which surprised him even more. He just kept reaching around, his arms going ever deeper, all the way to his armpits now, but they came across nothing. The tub seemed bottomless. Despair took hold of him and he began to lose faith in his own senses. He could, after all, still see her hair, unmoving despite the disturbance he caused to the water during his wild but ultimately fruitless search for her.

Not sure how long exactly he knelt here already, Sasuke nevertheless knew that she couldn't possibly hold her breath for so long. He had to do something now!

In the spur of the moment, Sasuke grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her up and there she sat now, neither coughing nor gasping for breath, not even blinking – like nothing happened. He cupped her face in his hands, staring hard into her eyes, but they revealed nothing as to what was going on behind them.

"Sayuri, what are you doing?" he asked, detecting a slight tremor in his voice.

"Nothing," she said and brushed his hands away. "Don't you see? There's nothing we can do."

She dived under again and carried on drowning in silence.

And there was nothing Sasuke could do about it.

When Sasuke woke up this time, he really was awake. Nevertheless, the scenario was the same; the other side of the bed was empty. Under an abstract veil of déjà-vu, Sasuke shot up in bed. Again. With his heart hammering against his chest, he let his eyes scan the dark room. Again. But all he could see was an indefinable jumble of shadows. He cursed his poor vision.

What felt like a myriad of heartbeat explosions later, he found her sitting in the rocking chair, in the far away corner of the room. It has been nothing but a dream after all. And what a stupid one at that…

The initial relief about finding the world the way it ought to be, without bottomless waters and his girlfriend drowning in her helplessness, soon gave way to renewed wonderment, as it was again a mystery to Sasuke how she could have already recovered from being hypnotised. By his Sharingan no less. Had he slept in? A look out of the window told him that such wasn't the case. The sun hadn't yet risen, although the shadow that shrouded the world outside had faded from a jet black to a sooty grey. It could be no later than five o'clock. He didn't think she'd wake up before six or seven. The most powerful Genjutsu in the world was apparently no match for the worried mind of a mother bereft of her child.

Fighting the urge to ask her what she was doing, only to have her return a devastating admission of their powerlessness, like she did in his dream, Sasuke instead moved to the edge of the bed, watching her, before saying, "It's too early still."

Upon hearing his voice, some life must have returned into her body and disturbed her statue-like stillness. She drew a sharp breath and lifted her head. For the briefest of seconds their eyes locked, blue meeting black, before she lowered her head and collapsed in on herself again, like a marionette having its wires cut off.

"It's been forty-one hours," Sayuri said, her voice a forlorn whisper, even in the stillness of the room. "The longest time I've ever been separated from him was at the day of the festival and that were only twenty hours. Now it's twice as long."

Almost two full days… That was enough time for just about anything to happen. Sasuke couldn't believe that it's been such a long time that his son was already in the clutches of the vindictive Uchiha. The mere thought caused a suffocating and all too familiar sense of rage to swell in his chest, so as Sasuke spoke, his voice sounded hollow and was invaded by an occasional tremor.

"Madara will pay for this," he said and stood up, walking to the window," I will kill him with my own hands."

"Vengeance again?" Sayuri asked, causing Sasuke to turn his head slightly, looking at her from the corner of his eye. "It's like an endless circle isn't it? A perfectly repetitive circle… You'll never get out of it."

"I can't let him get away with what he did."

"I know."

"The moment he laid his hands on you, he sealed his fate."

"I know," she nodded again, holding Sasuke's gaze, until he, after deeming her response sincere, turned around to the window again, watching bare skeletons of trees sway in the strong wind. Last night's storm hadn't left but a single leaf on the gnarled branches. They reminded him of broken fingers, too tangled together to be fixed.

"As long as you put Mikan's life above Madara's death."

"I will", he said.

"Because he's our only chance at a family," she spoke dubiously and wrapped her arms tightly around her drawn up knees.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sasuke asked, turning around with a frown on his face, only to watch Sayuri bury her face in her knees, escaping the questions in his eyes.

"I can't have any more children."

"What?"

"I'm infertile," she whispered, wondering how her eyes could be painfully dry, when she felt close to tears. "There's only Mikan. I can't give you any more children. I'm sorry."

That sounded like she had given him up already. As though she was apologising for not being able to produce a substitute, now that the first baby was lost. What an awful mother she was.

For a moment, a moment that had yet to find an end, they were both silent. Speechless, really. Sasuke wasn't quite able to make use of the piece of revelation, she had dropped on him like a bomb that had failed to detonate yet. It just wouldn't sink in.

He moistened his lips. His mouth felt so dry, even a whole ocean couldn't quench that thirst. "Since when do you know…?" he asked, his voice hoarse and distant, his eyes vacant, as though whoever used to live in there had left in order to search for a time when the world had still been right. It would be a long search.

She opened her mouth to talk, her lips making a slight smacking noise as she pried them apart, but Sasuke interrupted her before she could even get started.

"Oh…" it came out and his eyes widened as he remembered her coming out of the hospital late. Remembered him being angry at her that day and the following ones.

Now isn't that what you wanted?

No wonder she hadn't told him. He hadn't given her a chance to, he had to admit that, but nonetheless he couldn't help feeling angry. With her, with himself, with fate, with the whole damn world – but most of all with her. He couldn't even look at her right now.

"I'm so, so sorry," her voice was like static hissing, completely unlike the high-pitched weeps she had expected to burst out of her mouth.

He'd like to tell her that it was okay, that it wasn't her fault and he knew it wasn't, she hadn't chosen to be infertile, although from how she had talked in the past she might have tempted her fate.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he couldn't help asking, his voice sounding taut, like his vocal cords were stretched to the point of snapping. Why did she wait for a moment such as this one to release something as huge and devastating as this on him? There have been countless opportunities, so why now? Why at all?

"How could I? I know how much you want a big family," she murmured and rested her chin on her knees again, her eyes staring at something only she could see. Something far away and sad. Whatever it was, it brought a smile to her face, one with such a poignant quality that it seemed worse than if she had burst into tears. "You know, I always said I didn't want any more children and I think I also meant that, but… but whenever I thought of our future, I saw a hallway with many tiny shoes in it and dirty footprints everywhere…" The smile on her face widened for a second, looking almost sincere. Something flickered in her eyes, but before he had a chance to make out what it was, it went out again, like a match being struck in the middle of a hurricane. Her smile evaporated, as though it has never been there. "Now how could I have told you that this was never going to happen?"

"So we won't have any more children…" Sasuke said, but even verbalising it, didn't make it any easier for him to believe it. How could something like this happen and why did it happen to them? Why always them? He derived only little comfort from the fact that it seemed to grieve her too, when he would have thought she'd jump for joy instead. They say a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved, but how should knowing that the person you love is in the same pain as you are make you feel any better? He hated seeing her like this. "But we will not lose the one we have."

That was all the encouragement he could give her, but she didn't buy it. She remembered all too well the sounds of him hitting the wall over and over again. He had lost control - that just had to mean he was hopeless himself.

The next hour slipped by quietly. They couldn't think of words that would do justice to their current situation and so they rather said nothing at all. Did nothing at all… Only as the first dim gleams of the rising sun heralded the end of the night and the arrival of a new, grey day, did they start getting ready for their pending journey and all the hardships they were sure to encounter.

Sayuri had taken a shower now, too, all the time doing her best to ignore the sight of the broken tiles and thoughts about the violence involved in order to create so much damage, but the shard that got stuck in her foot made that impossible. Even now it reminded her again and again with every step she took and even when she was not moving at all. It made for a nice change to feeling nothing at all, though.

In the large, orderly wardrobe, she searched for new clothes and ended up with a thick, black pullover, a black vest and beige trousers she had to roll up, as to not step on them. All her new garments she owed to the man, for the woman owned nothing but dresses, skirts and blouses – solely things that weren't suited for any kind of activity other than standing, sitting and looking nice. Her current attire wasn't ideal either, being too big and all, but at least she could move around freely and was sheltered from the cold.

So now she was ready and for the moment there was nothing else for her to do, other than waiting for the others to complete their preparations as well. Sasuke was checking the contents of his backpack. Once he was done, he looked up to see Sayuri stand in the middle of the room with her slumped shoulders and her too big clothes, staring out of the window. Even in this not exactly big room, she looked lost – lost to him. As though she had become a different person since her confession. More likely, though, it was his own way of seeing her that had changed, but he did not know in how far and this was hardly the time to get to the bottom of such sentiments…

"Do you have any weapons?" he asked, the sound of his voice sending a surprised jolt through her body. It has been a while since either of them talked.

"Uh-uhm," she shook her head and turned around slowly as Sasuke approached her.

"Here."

He took off his leg pouch and handed it to her, but she only looked at it hard and then into his face.

"What about you?"

"I have enough others," he said, "C'mon."

He reached for her thigh, lifting it so he could fasten the bag to her leg. He pulled the two straps tight and then let go of her again.

"That should do," he said as he turned around to take care of his own things again.

"Thank you."

Her voice was a soft whisper, barely audible, but there was something about it, something he couldn't quite place, that made Sasuke freeze in his movement and turn back to her again. What he found in her face was sincere gratitude for something as trivial as this, something he regarded as a given, not even worth mentioning, but more importantly, perhaps, he saw her fear.

"You'll have to get a grip on yourself," he said sternly, when what he really wanted was to comfort her and tell her everything would be alright, but he didn't know if it would be. What he knew though was that their chances would be higher if he didn't have to worry about her. At least not all that much… "No matter what happens. You're a shinobi and shinobi don't show their emotions. They swallow their fear and do what they have to do," Sasuke said and felt awful for it. She looked as though he had just slapped her, but it had been necessary. Then, however, she straightened her back and met his gaze head on.

"I know," she said, her voice still quiet, but no longer with that timid, mouse-like quality about it. "I won't be a burden to you. I'll do whatever it takes, even-"

"-Even?" he asked as she failed to finish her sentence.

"Even if that means turning my back on the Alliance," she said and however little she seemed to like the implications of her own words, Sasuke could still see the determination in her face. She meant what she said. "Mikan means the world to me… and if it can't be avoided… if there is really no other way…"

"I know," Sasuke ended her struggle for the right words. "We'll do whatever it takes."

"Yes," she nodded, then lowered her gaze. "Does that make us bad people?"

"…It makes us good parents," Sasuke said after a while.

"That's enough for me," she said, feeling like at least a tiny bit of a burden had been lifted off her shoulders. Enough to find the courage to lean forward to kiss him, regardless of the situation and the conversation from before. It just felt right and as he responded to her kiss she knew it was.

They had both been right. Sasuke and Karin. Sasuke was right with saying that she had to get a grip on herself and Karin had been right with saying that crying wouldn't get her anywhere. If at all it would make things harder for them. But there was absolutely no need to be sad. They'd get Mikan back, safe and sound, she was absolutely sure of that. Something like this just didn't happen to babies. What kind of a world would that be in which babies were not only taken hostage, but also died from it? How could you possibly vindicate that something as pure and innocent as a new life was befallen by such a dreadful fate? Even in the animal world it is a basic rule that youngsters are not touched and there had to be some truth to all the movies in which children never die. They'd get him back for sure and then Madara will pay for having dared to lay a finger on a part of their family.

Once they were done with their preparations for the journey, they departed the bedroom of the two strangers, who had, without even knowing about it, provided them with fresh clothes and shelter. Karin was already downstairs. They could hear her make all sorts of clattering noises in the kitchen. The radiators had been turned on all night and the air was very dry now. The smell of mildew had been pushed away to some extent. There was a slight herbal scent in the air, too, or maybe it was just their imagination. Whatever the case, the house definitely appeared more inviting than it did yesterday, which did not mean that they would extend their stay.

As they entered the kitchen they found it not quite as revolting as the day before. Karin must have swept the table clear off the dirty dishes and the dead mouse was gone as well, leaving nothing but a black blotch as a token. However in place of the disgusting factors, chaos had now taken over the room. The doors of every single cupboard stood open and all drawers had been pulled out to the point of almost falling out. Except for some miscellanea, the cupboards looked empty. But there were two pots on the oven, their boiling contents beating hard against the lids, as though determined to escape.

"My… look who woke up," Karin said and clicked her tongue, "Didn't you talk about setting out early? I'm down here since almost an hour already."

According to the clock, it was not even six yet, which seemed early enough and which actually wasn't Karin's time at all, but she has been too hungry and maybe also too perturbed to sleep any longer and so she had already looked for things they could take with them. Things that would not perish too quickly or more importantly hadn't perished already.

"We'll look for food and then we'll go," Sasuke explained.

"I already did and there isn't much there. Only found a bag of rice and a can of anko. Most of the cupboards are empty – and the fridge has a life of its own growing inside." The memory of the colourful mould habitat or much worse perhaps the nasty smell of it, brought a grimace to Karin's face. "Anyway… I'm cooking the rice now."

With a sceptical look on her face, Sayuri went to the oven and peered into one of the pots, asking, "You're making breakfast for us?"

"Yeah… for us…" Karin said, looking like she had just bitten into something sour. She did not like that one at all. "Oh well, be my guest."

"Thank you," Sayuri said, wondering why it was so easy to say thank you for these little things, but not for the big ones. Not for the things that really mattered.

"Whatever," Karin shrugged. "There's no coffee here, but I found some tea. Only barley tea, though."

Which wouldn't be all that effective, when it came to revitalising their spirits, but it was better than nothing.

"Tea will do," Sasuke said graciously.

"It better should," Karin snubbed. He should be glad that she shared her breakfast at all. How did the saying go 'the early bird catches the worm'? – There's never anything about 'and passes it on to someone else'…

The day was still young and the sun's dimmed rays cast a soft light upon the tens of thousands of people, who had all assembled in the barren region before Kumo Gakure. They were standing in more or less orderly files, ordered by their squad and now all waiting to hear the words of their commanders before going to war.

Despite the early hour, the air was charged with electricity, almost too much it seemed. The excitement turned into negative energy and people were beginning to lose sight of the enemy they were about to fight very soon now, and instead directed their penned up emotions at each other. Mistrusting each other, rekindling old feuds, sometimes dating back to days long before their birth, losing sight of the bigger picture – the fact that they were all here together to fight for a common goal: survival.

Like most of the Hyûga, Hinata was a part of the Second Division, which had specialised in short-range attacks. Their commander was Kitsuchi, a shinobi from Iwa Gakure, she had never yet seen, much less talked to and she wondered what kind of a person it was that would be in charge of their fates. The fates of quite a lot of people, actually. The Army of the Shinobi Alliance counted roughly eighty thousand people, divided into nine divisions, which meant that every commander was in charge of several thousand people. To Hinata that seemed like far too much responsibility to place on the shoulders of some few selected persons. But then not everyone was like her. There were people who coped perfectly well with the duties of being a leader and grew beyond themselves. She happened to know one such person for sure.

And now standing here, watching the people around her with pearl-like eyes that were renowned for their power and not their beauty, Hinata couldn't help but wonder if she couldn't find Naruto anywhere amidst the vast crowd. Somewhere upfront, perhaps, or at the spot where there was the greatest commotion. He always seemed to be in the centre of everything, like the sun if you will. He certainly was occupying a place in her life that was as important as that of the sun. But after what happened she was no longer sure if he was willing to maintain that role or eclipse her world in hopeless darkness. She couldn't know for sure, because she hasn't seen him since that day. And so she was looking for him now, despite knowing that he wasn't here, but at a safe place, not even knowing what was going on. Still it was hard to imagine that there was anything that could keep him away from here. Keep him from risking his life for the sake of everyone else, the way he always did.

But not this time. For a change it was them who would fight to protect him and not the other way around. She was not a born leader and not particularly courageous either- hell, she was scared out of her wits! But for his sake – for the sake of the boy who never gave up – Hinata would fight. She would first fight to save his life and then she would fight to gain back his trust. And she would gain it back. After all she never went back on her word.

It wasn't raining any longer, but it was not not raining either. The humidity was riding the winds in undulating sheets, too fine to make out the single drops. Everything was clammy, from their clothes to their skin – even the stony ground under their feet. It was anything but a pleasant journey, but at least the air was getting warmer, the wind losing some of its chill and the biting edge that had tormented their weather-beaten skin the day before. It was about noon now, which meant that Sasuke's group was on their feet since six hours give or take. And still they had nothing but their intuition to lead the way. Karin hasn't been able yet to make out Madara's location and so they continued moving into the direction of the Land of Hot Water. It brought them closer to the area where the battles would be carried out, at least according to plan, but it couldn't be helped. Where else should you be able to find the leader of the enemy troops if not on the battlefield?

The terrain was very steep and they seemed to be walking straight into that massive grey blanket that was hiding the blue of the sky. Sometimes they walked along dangerously narrow and dizzyingly high paths, winding like snakes around the mountains, whereas other times, like now, they crossed inconspicuous plateaus that seemed harmless enough, at least until you came to the edge and looked down at the pointed rocks littering the distant ground like a petrified pine forest. At least from so high up they looked sharp enough to skewer you, should you have the bad fortune to slip and fall. In reality, however, it would more likely be a collaboration of gravity and the hard stone that would leave you as flat as a pancake, but at least in one piece more or less. The silence accompanying their group allowed for a lot of opportunities of imagining scenarios such as this one.

They had not found any traces and had not encountered a single person until, around early afternoon, the tide turned. They heard voices, rushed and excited and then noise, a sudden bang and then a dull rumbling, like that of a rockslide. It came from farther down, some levels below them. Immediately, the three shinobi dashed towards the edge of the plateau, perching on the ground in the cover of some boulders and staring down into the depth, trying to assess the situation without being caught while doing so.

"What's going on there?" Sasuke asked his former team-mate, as his eyes failed to see anything other than the faint mist of rain and some more solid mist, like a cloud gone astray in the depths of the valley.

"I'm not sure," Karin murmured, her forehead furrowed in concentration. "I can sense three shinobi-no wait, now only two. But they seem to belong together."

"And what about the enemy?" Sayuri asked. She was crouching right next to Karin and now received an irritated look from the redhead.

"That's what I mean, I can't sense one. There's only those two and still they seem to be fighting something."

"That doesn't make much sense," Sasuke remarked and was now the next target for Karin's irritation.

"Really? Don't say…" she remarked dryly, rolling her eyes.

"Maybe they walked into a trap?" Sayuri suggested.

"And now they're fighting it? – Hardly," Karin dismissed her idea and focused her full attention on the scene below them again, using the chakra-signatures she could sense to create a picture in front of her mind's eye, but it remained incomplete. She was missing something quite essential. "Just one more left… Something's fishy about this."

The three of them stared hard into the depth, eyes narrowed and brows wrinkled with concentration, trying to somehow see through the fog and through the mystery at what was going on below them. Trying to find out if it mattered to them at all. And so they lay there, all caught up in their fruitless musings, when suddenly a shadow fell over them and a brigade of white spiders crawled across the rock.

"Katsu!"

"Is there any place you want to go to? Any special wishes?"

"Hmm… I'd like to go somewhere nice…" Yuumei whispered, feeling foolish for her answer, not only because it sounded so terribly childish, but also because deep down inside her she was convinced that such a place didn't exist. Or no longer existed. Not for her anyway.

"That should be manageable," Isamu laughed, "just about every place is nicer than the snake's labs."

Snake's labs?

She had no idea what he was talking about. They've been on the road together since a whole week now and they had often mentioned things, they apparently assumed her to know about, when she really had no idea, but tried not to let it show. Maybe she should come clean with them, but she was too afraid they'd leave her behind, when they knew that she wasn't like them after all. When they knew she hasn't been truthful about her age. When they knew she was not the same kind of fugitive as they were and that these men haven't really been after her.

She couldn't tell them and so she reacted like she always did, by lowering her head and avoiding their eyes.

"Hey. It's okay; we're out of there now." He tried to encourage her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"No," she hissed and pulled back as though she had been burnt, but in that moment a searing pain shot through her arm. "Ngh."

"Hey? What's wrong?" Senkai asked her calmly, reaching his hand out to her reflexively, but then he dropped it on half way.

"Nothing."

There is no pain, there is no pain…

But she felt it clearly. Something was definitely wrong with her arm. It felt like it was drying up, as if her blood had been squeezed out of it and instead of healing, it became worse from day to day.

"Isamu?" Senkai turned to his comrade, seeking help as to how to deal with this situation.

"Well, if the rude girl says it's nothing, then it is nothing." There was a sulky scowl on his face that quickly gave way to a grin, though. "Let's go somewhere nice then."

…

…