Title: Seeking Rin
Author: Killaurey
Word Count: 500
Rating: T
Notes: Like it says on the tin, this is a snippet of Seeking Rin-quite a lot further into the story than is posted. Don't read if you don't want spoilers.
Written for Day 7 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.
Prompt: Chance
Sakura, with a cloaking jutsu wrapped tightly around her, her chakra muffled and suppressed, her footfalls silent, wanders the bare, white halls of the empty medical facility and tries hard to not even breathe loudly
Her heart is the loudest thing she can hear. It beats in her ears.
She strains her mind, looking for Ino in the back of it, like Ino so often has been, but it's like a broken TV: nothing but a susurrus of static. Ino's not there.
(Or if she is, she's broken. Sakura prefers to believe she's not there.)
Passing an elevator and deeming it too dangerous to take, Sakura looks for the stairs. Every room is locked tight, warded with jutsu that she doesn't dare take the time to unravel. She'd be worried but Ino gave her the room number.
This isn't the right floor.
It's frustrating to go slow and so tempting to hurry. Sakura holds herself back and makes each step deliberate, each move a caution.
I've only got one chance at this, she reminds herself. Just one. I have to make the most of it.
She can't afford any screw ups.
Finding the stairwell, Sakura inches down it, keeping her eyes peeled and sending her chakra out in tiny, (hopefully) unnoticeable tendrils to search for life, for anything that might be a danger.
Three floors pass in this manner and by the time Sakura hits the fifth floor, she's exhausted and sweat-soaked. As a medical nin, she can hold the most demanding medical jutsu for hours. Concealment jutsu aren't her field. They're harder.
But finally, she's on the right floor.
This floor is as barren and cold as the other. Sakura creeps down the hall, scanning the doorways, searching for their numbers. The numbers get closer to her target number and the doors change. Little windows, barred with steel mesh and chakra-enhanced wire begin appearing. The windows are set higher than she is tall; the doors are huge.
The jutsu surrounding the doors grow in strength until even just walking down the hall is an act of will because with every step, Sakura feels like she's suffocating, like she's dying.
She keeps moving.
A familiar-yet-unfamiliar chakra signature brushes her senses. Sakura stops even though the door's number is wrong and goes up on tiptoe to peer inside.
Kakashi lies on a metal bed, strapped down. His muscles press against the restraints as he tries to free himself, his face full of pure, stark terror and hideous pain.
Something has its head buried in his stomach. Blood is everywhere.
Sakura lifts her hands, calling chakra to them to break the door in—
No, Ino's voice says weakly. Don't.
Her chakra splutters and fades. Why not? Sakura demands.
It's… a cure… Ino's voice disappears, the static back and stronger.
Sakura stares in at Kakashi and, steeling herself, turns away from him. "I'll be back," she swears.
Then she starts running, heedless of the danger.
Ino's dying. She knows it in her soul.