Sasuke's Point of View
Glaring at the paper in my hands, I tried my hardest to gather some semblance of composure and control, preferably before I ripped it to pieces, angry from the crack of dawn—and all that thanks to one very annoying Haruno Sakura.
I had woken up early that morning, with a hot cup of strong coffee being the first thought that crossed my mind. I had been working late, as seemed to be the norm these days, and I'd had a particularly rough night with an insupportable stack of paperwork.
As my luck would have it, though, the kitchen was not as blissfully empty as I had hoped.
She was there, right in the middle of the room, leaning against the kitchen island as she scribbled something on a piece of paper; feet crossed at the ankles, one of her legs moving slightly from side to side in a lazy manner, elbow on the counter and chin in her hand, she was dressed in the skimpiest piece of black lingerie I had ever seen.
With her lace-clad ass directly in my line of sight, I turned on my heels and stomped my way out of the house, only managing to get some caffeine in my system after I arrived at the office.
But even there, I had barely taken a seat for five minutes when she stormed in, all high heels and her stupid tight dress, throwing a file onto my desk that made me see red.
"What the fuck is this?" I'd demanded upon her rude entrance, picking up the yellow manila envelope.
"Open it," she encouraged, lips pursued, hands on her hips.
I tried not to consider what she had on underneath her clothes and instead focused my attention on the mysterious papers she had tossed in my face.
A moment later, I was ready to wring her precious little neck. "And why is it that you have gone shopping with the budget assigned to your project?"
She smirked. "Well, some asshat ripped my favorite dress—and two pairs of panties. Just thought you might want to reimburse that." With that and a wink, she turned around and left the room, her bright pink hair the last to leave my sight as the door slid shut behind her.
I'd quite honestly wanted to run after her, grab her arm, drag her back inside, throw her onto my desk—right on top of that very file—and fuck the living daylights out of her.
Instead, I'd burned a glare into the wooden door and crumpled the receipt she'd given me in my fist. There was no doubt anymore—someday, I was either going to have a heart attack or I was going to burst an aneurysm; five years on the battlefield hadn't killed me, but living under the same roof as her definitely would.
Besides, what type of woman spent on lingerie what I would spend on food for five days and end up being wholly and completely satisfied? A crazy one, for sure.
…Though, unfortunately, I couldn't say it wasn't entirely worth it.
It had been a couple of days since we'd last had sex, initiated by me, quite surprisingly, but my hands seemed to have had a mind of their own when they reached out to touch her—and it wasn't as if I could complain, because I enjoyed each and every second of the end result.
Although I was sure that her project would do everybody a great deal of good once it was off the ground, I wasn't truly interested in how she wanted to go about it. It occurred to me that was, perhaps, because I trusted her—because I'd handed the hospital over to her a couple of months before and she'd turned it into a powerhouse. Sakura knew what she was doing, without a single doubt, and I was certain (even if I would never admit it out loud, especially in her presence) that none of my input could possibly make her job even the slightest bit better or easier.
Which was why—complete with the fact that I couldn't have cared less which building she wanted to use—I found the curve of her ass to be so much more interesting. For such a spitting bitch, she sure looked like a supermodel—and if the clothes she chose to wear were any indication, then she knew it perfectly well; relished it, even. I'd suspected that, of course, from the moment I saw her rocking her first pair of high-heels, her skirt short and her top low. Then, when I had her naked (more or less) in front of me for the first time, and I realized she had on things I'd thought I'd see only on women in movies or photo-shoots—then, I had no doubt anymore.
She could have stopped me, though. She had the strength and the will power to stop me a hundred times. And, clearly, my respect for her would have increased tenfold had she been able to turn around and slap my hand away.
Needless to say, she hadn't, and the matter wasn't worth discussing any further—except for maybe the question of whether she would manage to stop me next time.
Growling at the fact that, even when I was so, so angry with her, I still thought about her in my bed, I threw the document I had been attempting to read for so long without success to the side and placed my head in my hands.
A knock sounded on my door before I could regain my composure, and I snapped a clipped 'come in' to whoever was unlucky enough to be on the other side.
A vaguely familiar shinobi stepped in, coming to stand in front of me with a quick bow and his back ramrod straight.
If there was something I truly appreciated about Oto shinobi, that was their inane discipline. One would assume that, with the lack of organization the country had suffered during Orochimaru's reign, people would be rebellious—even uncivilized, to a degree. But that was so far from the truth it was almost laughable, and when I thought about how disrespectful Kakashi—and other ninjas—had tended to be in Konoha, I was suddenly more than eager to see the dobe become Hokage so that he could deal with that while I could watch and be smug. And while I was aware that part of their perfectly disciplined behavior might have quite a lot to do with fear, I was determined to have them maintain it out of respect.
Otherwise—well, fear was good, as well.
"What is it?" I asked, still peeved because of my horrible morning.
"There has been an incident," he reported. "ANBU Team Eight. They were ambushed on their way back. The captain died at the scene, the other two members have been taken to the hospital."
I was out of my seat and across the room before he could utter another word, my anger towards Sakura completely forgotten.
I had assigned Team Eight a recon mission a couple of weeks before and sent a retrieval squad after them when they failed to return another three days after their designated arrival time. I had suspected something had happened to them, that the reason why they were late was not because they had stumbled across something that was worth investigating further and were unable to contact us to let us known about it, but I had assumed it was more among the lines of them having been captured—not attacked, not killed. My people had never been killed before. They had been injured, yes, sometimes quite seriously, but not killed. Otogakure was not such a large threat to any of the large villages—not yet, at least—and people had nothing against us personally. Even my own enemies had never attempted anything on anyone other than me.
Mentally cursing as I tried to work out, without much success, who the author of the disaster had been, I stormed through the front doors of the hospital and headed straight for the receptionist's desk, catching her by surprise as I slammed my hand on the counter more forcefully than I meant.
"Team Eight," I demanded. "Where are they?"
My breath caught in my throat and my heart nearly stopped when I saw her sadly shake her head. "None of them made—"
"Where's Sakura?" I demanded before she could finish, before I could even fully process the words that were coming out of my mouth.
The woman blinked in surprise, but recovered quickly, probably sensing my hurry and impatience. "Oh, she went home. She was too tired—could barely even stand up on her own."
My eyes narrowed. "And you let her leave alone?" I hissed.
"She refused to let somebody accompany her!" she defended, shaking her head. "She said she could handle herself. And—"
I disregarded the rest of her frantic explanation as I immediately turned to leave, storming back the way I had come from, out of the building.
The fact that there were people out there who were trying to bring my village down when I was only trying to keep it afloat was disturbing enough.
What was even more disturbing—and also incredibly annoying—was the fact that the first thing that came to my mind when the information sunk in… was her. Sakura. She must have been the one to take care of Team Eight. I knew for a fact she still scrubbed in for every emergency, as if she still only trusted herself when it came to critical situations, to lives that were on the line, even when she had trained these medics to near perfection. I was well aware that might be because she did that in Konoha, as well; because there were few people with her level of expertise.
But as much of a good medic as she was, she was an ever better person, and I felt my heart clench painfully—and quite stupidly—in my chest at the simple thought of how she might be feeling at that point. There was no way she was taking their deaths well, not if they had breathed in for the last time on her operating bed, not if she'd had her hands tainted by their warm blood when their hearts stopped beating. She had changed a lot, so much she was almost unrecognizable, but she still had the same gullible heart and the same compassionate emotions that made her weak and strong at the same time.
And, suddenly, I cared about nothing else. All I wanted was to find her and see her and be with her. I needed to make sure she was alright.
Even if, in the back of my mind, I knew there was only a one in a million chance of that being real.
A/N: Next chapter coming sometime next week!
Let me know what you think! :)