A/N: Thanks for all the reviews! Zebras shall arrive as soon as I've cleared your method of payment.
Disclaimer: Every time you review, a dollar magically appears in my bank account, because fanfiction is totally a profitable business. (S-A-R-C-A-S-M)
Scrumdidileeumptious
Chapter 48
Cat Got Your Face?
3rd Person POV
Deidara rocked the girl in his arms back and forth, whispering comfort in her ear as he felt panic course through his veins. He wondered what in the world he was going to do. He'd promised not to tell anybody, but how was he supposed to explain away all her injuries? On top of that, she was bleeding. A lot. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth, from a cut on her cheek where a ring Orochimaru had been wearing cut her, but mostly from the stab wound in her leg. It seemed that the harder she sobbed, the more blood came gushing out.
There was blood everywhere. It was all over the rug; a puddle of it glistened by her bed where she'd been originally skewered, and a trail of it led to the door. Now a new puddle forming where they sat, huddled, neither knowing what was supposed to come next. He couldn't contemplate explaining the blood away to the guys by saying 'Sakura was having some… er… girl problems, un.' As a man, he just couldn't do it. Plus, even that excuse didn't explain the glass littering the floor. Everything from fine dust to large chunks to the unbroken half of the beer bottle lying a few feet away glistened on the carpet.
Things got worse when he felt her go limp in his arms, completely and totally unconscious.
Deidara swore. "Shit, Sakura. Don't do this to me, un." He pleaded with her, but she remained unresponsive in every way.
Grunting with both effort and frustration, he stood up and placed her body gently on the closest bed, which happened to belong to Zetsu, and reached under Sasori's bed for the redhead's bag. He poked expertly around inside until he found the inner pocket; inside that were Sasori's spare keys. He couldn't very well drive Sakura to the hospital on his Harley, now, could he? He could imagine her limp body falling off on the highway and run over by a sixteen wheeler. Ugh, he needed to stop thinking such terrible thoughts. Wasn't Sakura currently beat up enough without entertaining wild delusions in which she sustained further injury?
He pocketed the keys, didn't bother to close and replace Sasori's bag, and scooped Sakura into his arms with a concentrated effort not to stagger under the dead weight. She was light and getting lighter by the second as more blood leaked out, but he was panicking and couldn't seem to find any of his previously treasured strength.
However, despite the hair, Deidara was a man. A big, strong man. So he sucked it up and carried Sakura out of the room, down the stairs, out of the building to the senior parking lot, and into Sasori's car, strapping her limp body into the passenger's seat. Feeling rather proud of himself under a few layers of fear and worry over Sakura, he got into the driver's seat and drove like a bat out of hell to the hospital.
- Stop signs? Red lights? Deidara prefers to think of those things as guidelines more than actual rules. -
Sakura's POV
So, have you ever slept over at a friend's house and been woken up only a couple hours after falling asleep to the sound of their unfamiliar alarm clock? It's such a foreign sound, so far removed from your fatigue that you don't realize at first that you're supposed to get up. Because that's the feeling I have right now.
Or at least it sounded like an alarm clock at first. Now that I'm listening harder, however, it is the clear and recognizable sound of my heartbeat's electronic equivalent. It reminded me of the time I'd been hit by the ambulance. If I opened my eyes, which I didn't quite have the strength to do yet, my heart's progress would be clearly displayed by a green line on a black screen just behind me next to numbers I could never quite make sense of.
As consciousness washed over me like waves at low tide, I felt the familiar pull of a paper gown and the itchiness of a wool blanket over my arm. I never like to have my arms contained by blankets. The crinkle of a paper covered pillow sounded beneath my head when I shifted slightly with the intention to stretch, and I could feel tape attaching a swab of gauze to my cheek. The bandage pulled on the paper pillow slightly, as if they had been joined in the night and I was finally forcing them to part.
I ignored it, not quite able to process anything yet, and began to stretch, starting with my toes, cocooned and sweaty in the depths of the blanket. Then I began to wiggle the stiffness out of my legs and arms. As I reached over my head and felt a strong pain in my neck and thigh from the movement, my back arched up off the vinyl mattress and several ribs screamed in protest by signaling white-hot pain and channeling it straight to my brain.
And in that white-bright flash of excruciating, debilitating, completely unexpected agony, I remembered the whole ordeal as one would a nightmare.
My body, still in mid stretch, fell back to the mattress with a dull thud, causing more pain. I could hear rather than feel the air leaving my lungs in abject shock and horror. Beyond that, I felt awe and gratitude towards Deidara. But still, horror was predominant.
Finally I was made aware of the weight on my waist–earlier mistaken for the familiar feeling of a rolled up waistband on a pair of sweats–when it tugged on me, demanding my attention, offering warmth and comfort. My eyes, which had previously been forced open by the memory, rolled to the side and set their gaze upon the boy who had saved my pathetic ass as he lay beside me.
Deidara looked as tired as I felt, and that was really saying something. His blue eyes were sunken with insomnia and it didn't take a genius to figure that the origin of his exhaustion stemmed from his worry over me while I lay here, in what was no doubt a hospital bed, comatose for god knows how many hours.
There was no playful, comforting smirk, or customary good morning. Instead he watched my expression in a reversal of our roles–normally I stared at him. We were at a standstill for many minutes, just looking intently at each other until, finally, he made the first move. The hand that had lain on my waist lifted from its resting place and floated upwards, grazing my body with limp fingertips, brushing across my stomach, over my breast and down my collarbone with a feather light touch before he laid his palm, which was cold and much too big, gently upon my cheek with enough pressure to assure himself that I was, in fact, solid.
His blue eyes were tortured and shifting endlessly as they watched my face with caution, silently screaming apologies, begging forgiveness, as if the entire thing were his fault. As if he should have done more, or come to my side sooner. As if he couldn't believe I was there, staring back at him, and not in several bloody pieces on the floor of our dorm room.
I wanted to reach across the bed and hug him; he was only a few inches away. I tried, but my body didn't want to move and Deidara was too quick. He had rolled out of the bed and walked out the door before I could even begin to persuade my body to obey my brain and just hug the boy already.
Deidara returned, moments later, with a doctor… or nurse, I don't know. She took the clipboard from the foot of my bed, scanned the machines surrounding me, scribbled some things down, pushed some buttons, poked the bag supplying my morphine drip, and gave Deidara a very chilling look. Finally, her disapproving eyes washed over me.
"You're lucky your boyfriend brought you in when he did." She said tartly. "That stab wound missed the femoral artery, but when combined with your other injuries, you could have been in serious trouble."
With another frosty look at Deidara, she ignored my stupefied expression, replaced the clipboard, and swept from the room more like the queen of England than a hospital employee.
"What's her deal?" I asked. My voice sounded cracked and watery under the influence of pain killers and the aftermath of screaming so much back in the dorm room.
Deidara scoffed, glaring at where the woman had just disappeared from sight. "She thinks I did this to you, un."
"Oh," I said before I caught the full meaning. "Oh! So when she called you my 'boyfriend,' she meant my worthless layabout boyfriend that beats me?"
Deidara gave me a serious look. "I can't believe you're joking about this already, un." He shook his head as he moved to sit down in the chair against the wall.
I glared at him and patted the mattress I was laying on.
He froze and raised his right eyebrow (because he's anti-conformist like that).
I hit the mattress harder this time.
He shook his head no.
I beckoned him with my index finger, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively.
Deidara had to turn away so he could laugh into his hand silently.
Ego damaged, I turned away from him and faced to the opposite wall, arms crossed, lower lip protruding obscenely from my mouth as I pouted.
A few moments later, I felt the mattress dip behind me and I felt a hand pet my hair. I lifted my leg and shoved him in the thigh with my foot, refusing to look at him. "Go away, Deidara." I grumbled. "I don't want you anymore."
A voice chuckled (much smoother than Deidara's erratic guffaws of laughter). "What if I'm not Deidara, then?" The voice asked.
The mischievous lilt in his otherwise amused voice was a dead giveaway. Sure enough, when I looked over my shoulder, it was Itachi. "Then you can stay." I answered, taking his arm and guiding it around my shoulders as he lay down beside me and I flipped over so I could face him. Deidara sat forgotten, pouting in the corner. "How'd you find us?"
The amusement vanished from Itachi's face, leaving a blank slate. "We went to find Deidara during lunch period after he didn't return from getting his math book. When we saw the dorm room, we panicked and assumed you were at the hospital. Zetsu and Kisame are searching the other rooms, and the others are at other hospitals looking for you. Well, they're searching for you and for Sasori's car, which we spotted in the parking lot outside."
"Sasori's car is here?" I asked, confused.
Itachi's gaze softened. "I assume the grand theft auto might have been Deidara's idea. So you were unconscious on the way here, then? Or did you arrive by ambulance only to be followed by Deidara who suddenly didn't feel like riding his motorcycle?"
I bit my lip. "I guess I was unconscious." I admitted. I didn't really want him to know the details of the whole ordeal…
Yet after he'd seen the dorm room, how could I get out of giving him the story?
Itachi's gaze fixated on mine. Red on green. We're Christmas-y. Yuck.
"I fell." I blurted out the lie so naturally it almost seemed like truth. "In my sleep, I rolled out of bed and fell on the glass beer bottle on the floor. I was on the way to the bathroom to inspect the damage to my leg when I fell again because of the pain in my thigh, and I cracked my head on Zetsu's bedpost and accidentally broke Joey in the process." I explained, offering up my bandaged cheek as evidence of my fake fall. So far, that explained the blood, the bottle, the phone, and my face, but I was missing the bit of evidence that explained away the finger-shaped bruises on my neck. I was certain they were there, as Itachi had taken to tracing them absently with his own feather-light touch as I told him my lies.
"And these?" He muttered, looking only at them now, his red eyes boring holes in my neck and in my soul.
I swallowed, and I felt my throat move against his hand. "As I rounded the corner, on my way to the office to use their phone, I accidentally stumbled into… Gaara." The name just rose to my lips as if I'd summoned it from the depths of my subconscious. He could certainly be considered a threat without raising the warning bells Orochimaru and Kabuto would set off in Itachi's head. "He was taken by surprise and grabbed me around the neck. That's when Deidara arrived, and I was so shocked by the whole ordeal that I fainted. And here we are." I finished up, trying to shrug nonchalantly, but that's a hard thing to do when you're lying on your side.
Itachi breathed deeply though his nose, still stroking the bruises as if they might bring the truth to the surface. His eyes finally rose and met mine again. I didn't care how Christmas themed it was; I could look at those eyes all damn day. "So that's the story you're going to stick with? Throwing Gaara under the bus instead of just admitting you were attacked by a crazed pedophile and his midget sidekick?"
I pursed my lips, hating to be caught. "You just had to be a mind reader, didn't you?"
Itachi didn't answer. I looked away from his eyes and turned over so I could face away from him. "We have to tell somebody, Sakura. He should be arrested for what he's done." Itachi's voice was gentler now, less edgy and accusatory, and more coaxing.
I curled in on myself. I didn't even want to think about it anymore.
"Leave her alone, Itachi, un." Deidara said and I could almost picture him crossing his arms and giving Itachi his no-nonsense face. "She's had a long day; let her rest, un."
The bed shifted again, and the sudden coldness and sound of soft footsteps pacing to the chairs lining the wall told me that Itachi had gone. I wanted and needed for someone to lie beside me and hold me, but I couldn't bring myself to call him back to me.
I didn't want to need him anymore.
I didn't want to want anybody anymore.
I only wished that something would come along and scoop out my insides. To hollow me out so I couldn't feel the pain and agonizing longing anymore, nor the feeling of Orochimaru's fingers touching me, or Itachi's brilliant eyes watching my back, or the heavy comfort and painful distance of Deidara as he held me and rocked me back and forth, all the while whispering beautiful lies in my ear until the tears stopped and the sweet release of unconsciousness came.
I wished they weren't so nice to me, these friends of mine, because if they'd been cruel, the knot in my stomach might have been much simpler to untangle.
I drifted off to sleep again, dreaming of the corrupting snake from the Garden of Eden luring me to destruction.
-…-
When I woke up again, I could see a digital clock outside of my room reading 4:38 and as the windows were dark, I guess that meant am. I'd been moved from my single room in the ICU to a double room in the pain management ward, and I wasn't alone. Sasori and Deidara were gone, but their voices, arguing over a car, could be heard from the hallway. In my bed was Tobi's stuffed panda. Tobi himself was leaning so far over in a chair beside my bed that he'd fallen asleep on the edge of my mattress. Kisame was stretched across six plastic chairs in front of the large window, snoring like a chainsaw. Itachi was sitting at the foot of my bed with Zetsu, who was flicking through channels on the television restlessly. Beneath the TV, surprising the hell out of me, was Pein, slouched in yet another plastic chair, head hanging backwards, with his mouth slightly agape. He was fast asleep. And coming through the doors carrying trays of food and bickering the whole time were Hidan and Kakuzu.
"We should have just got her the freaking pudding," Kakuzu was complaining. "Much cheaper."
"She fucking like pancakes, asshole, so we're getting her some goddamn pancakes." Hidan sneered. In his hands atop a red tray was indeed a foot tall stack of pancakes.
Suddenly I was aware of how hungry I was.
"Why the fuck do I have to be here anyway? All she did was fall down. She does that a lot, so why's it such a big deal?" Kakuzu was very sulky.
Hidan didn't feel like taking his shit today. "Suck it up, dickwad. She's hurt. And nobody fucking asked for you to come. We just sent out a mass text for anybody who'd seen her, and you and Pein just had to feel fucking compelled to come. Why don't you bastards just go the fuck home already?"
"I still say pudding would have been better." Kakuzu wasn't backing down on the economic advantage of buying pudding versus pancakes.
Hidan's cheek twitched only twice before he really snapped. "I TOLD YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHE FUCKING LIKES THE GODAMN PANCAKES!"
"Stop shouting, you brats," Pein muttered sleepily, not even opening his eyes. "You're going to wake me up, and then I'll have to kill you."
Kakuzu muttered darkly about the ridiculous inflation rates at this 'stupid shitty hospital.' And then he continued to bemoan his bad luck in having to come all this way just for me. "What'd she ever do for me? I drove her to Mexico. And what's she done? Cheated me out of 233 million dollars, that's what. Stupid, pink-haired bitch."
"My, my, somebody's bitter today." I scolded Kakuzu.
Kakuzu glared fiercely, just as gothic and weirdly beautiful as I remembered him, with a personality even more volatile than I recalled. Then again, his grumpiness could probably be attributed to Hidan.
"Sit the fuck up and make room, Sakura, I brought us some food," Hidan said, forcing me to scoot over as he joined me on the already cramped hospital bed.
"What do you mean, us?" I asked bitterly. "You didn't even bring enough for me." I huffed, pulling the tray out of his hands and digging into the stack of pancakes in such a way that I'm sure I could be compared to a caveman.
Several minutes later, I shoved the empty plate back in his face. "Get more food," I growled. Like most people, I'm very grumpy when hungry.
"Wow, Sakura, you sure can eat," Tobi said, looking at me in awe. I guess the sound of my massacring innocent pancakes woke him up.
Kisame was still asleep and Itachi and Zetsu weren't interested in anything but the news. Pein was still "asleep" as well, but I had a feeling he was prolonging "waking up" so he didn't have to talk to me. He obviously wasn't breathing deeply and evenly, but I couldn't blame him. The last time I'd seen him, it had been… kinda awkward. Considering I'd kicked him in the shin before storming out of his store.
I kind of wished he'd just go home. I wasn't in the mood.
Kakuzu handed over the tray of pancakes he brought in earlier and I began to devour them, ignoring Tobi's awed stare completely and focusing now on the news, which wasn't loud enough for me to really hear.
"Excuse me?" The younger girl in the only other bed in the room called. She was quite alone and looked to be about 12 years old. "Can you turn that up?"
Itachi glanced over at her before turning the volume up, just in time for us to catch the five-day forecast predicted by the ugliest weatherman known to man. His name, according to the bottom of the screen, was Pablo Storm.
After he finished the report, the camera refocused on the anchorman who kept smiling his whitened teeth smile. "Thanks, Pablo." At the sound of Pablo, Kisame jerked awake. "In other news," here he paused for dramatic effect and changed his voice to a deeper octave, facing a different camera that zoomed in on his face. "When cats… attack."
"What?" Sasori and Deidara asked, poking their heads back in the room. That wasn't what they'd been expecting to hear. Apparently, that was supposed to be more dramatic than it actually was. However, the anchorman just plowed right on.
"Our continued coverage of this breaking story. Early this afternoon, two men crashed their large white van on the 405 into the barrier. The crash was not too bad and the men should get away only with a few bumps and bruises, but people at the scene described their faces as extremely mutilated. Police refuse to report on their names, but it has now been revealed that the reports of mutilation are true. Apparently, the crash was not due to alcohol or driving error, but can be blamed on a cat that stowed away in the backseat of the van and attacked the two men while they were driving.
"The victims professed to not know the cat, but one of them described it as a furry black ball of evil to a police officer before being rushed to a local hospital via ambulance. Nobody has seen hide nor hair of the mysterious cat since, but it makes one wonder: are they really safe house pets?"
"Fascinating story, Tom," the anchorwoman said. "Did you know that I have a cat?"
"No, that's intriguing, Diane." Tom said with heavy sarcasm. "And did your cat ever attack you while you were driving, causing you to be in a fatal accident?"
"No…" Diane said.
"Such a shame," Tom said, shaking his head.
I looked over at Kisame, who was looking at me. "You don't think…?" I began.
"Why would Bonbon maul two anonymous men?" He asked.
Something told me Bonbon hadn't mauled two anonymous men. Something told me she had mauled two evil pedophilic bastards. Something told me that what I had mistaken earlier for cowering under Zetsu's bed might actually have been barely contained rage. Had that cat really stalked Kabuto and Orochimaru, snuck into Kabuto's creeper van, and, once they were on the highway, attacked them?
Deidara began laughing loudly. "Oh, that is some sick karma, un!"
-End Chapter-
A/N: So, was it reallllllly Bonbon?
Domo Arigato RoRo Robato for the beta. Luves you.
Please review!
