Instant Message
By Keelah


He inspected the sodden words trickling into indiscernible streaks.

"Do you notice something?"

"It's still wet?"

"No." He glided a finger across the glass, smearing the thick, cherry substance in the process. "It's written from the inside."


Chapter FIFTY
The Death Game: Modified

The phone rang again for the second time that evening, the shrill sound rebounding between the wooden partitions of each room. With eyes warily attached to the gleaming monitor, worried that the Rogue would reappear at any moment, I grabbed the receiver and placed it against my ear.

"Don't react. Don't say my name."

Sasuke's commanding voice boomed at my eardrums before I could utter the word Hello. I bit my lower lip, preventing myself from nearly doing that very act, the exclamation of his name ready at the tip of my tongue. "Is he watching?" he muttered lowly, taking preventative measures in case the Rogue happened to be listening as well.

Quick orbs of jade flicked at the computer screen, zeroing in on the Contact List.

Rogue (Offline)

I waited a few more beats, certifying that the Rogue had indeed gone for tonight, that our game was over at least for the rest of this evening, and exhaled noisily when the miniscule round particle beside the Rogue's screen name remained just as it was, a neutral white dot indicating disconnection. I only hoped that it denoted his absence too.

"No," I murmured, matching his volume, "not anymore."

"Are you sure?"

Mechanically, my eyes strayed away from the computer to gaze out the adjacent windowpane. Through the glass and past my room's reflection and my own, I scrutinize the vague, moonlit shapes of the neighbouring houses and the span of the afternoon's multicoloured skies, already darkening to black at a quarter to five. I wondered if, concealed in the grey shadows of sunset, there was a pair of eyes staring back at me without my knowing, if my eyes grazed their presence but failed to be aware of it, failed to distinguish the lurking figures of the night from customary trees and houses and wandering animals.

"I'm never sure about anything anymore," I told Sasuke.

"Can you leave the house?"

"Why?"

"Shikamaru's dug up something from the e-mail."

"What is it?"

"We don't know," Sasuke sighed, puzzlement and frustration adding an edge to his tone. "Just meet us. I don't want to talk about this over the phone."

"Where?"

"There's a small library on the first floor of the community center, beside Konoha Secondary. It's less than a block from your house. We're already here."

"Okay. I'll see you in a few."

"Sakura?"

I halted, about to tear away the handset from the side of my head. "Yeah?"

"Try and leave the house without being noticed."

I didn't even know if he was still here or otherwise, whether or not I was under his watch even now. He had logged off so abruptly this afternoon, as though he had some other matter to attend to despite that I hadn't given him what he'd been asking for: tonight's kill. All the same, the Rogue saw every move I made and heard every word I spoke even when I'd been certain of his nonattendance—thus the thought of creeping out of the house without his notice seemed impossible to me, not to mention utterly terrifying.

"Do you want me to come by?" Sasuke asked, sensing through my doubts.

"No," I blurted, appalled that I silently yearned for exactly what he was suggesting. "No need. I can walk by myself."

"I don't mind, Sakura," he said, deciphering the untruth of my sentences as easily as seeing through thin, fine, colourless plastic. Sometimes it was scary how much Sasuke knew me, so much that he could work out my lies like a kindergarten-level story book; read my mind by merely locking his eyes with mine, like he could perceive a thousand thoughts from those viridian waters; or identify emotions by the sheer sound of my voice.

"No," I insisted, "I can... I'll go by myself. It's fine." Before Sasuke offered me a chance to reconsider, before I chickened out and gave in to the urge of begging him to pick me up, I hung up, perching the phone back on its base.

I shut down the computer and drew the curtains closed. Throwing on a sweatshirt and another jacket over top of it, I made my way down the stairs and crept out the back door, the screen shutting with a muted thud. Through the yard I tip toed with eyes darting at every moving shadow, though as far as I could tell the patio was empty, devoid of any other presence but my own.

Comforted, I set off into the dark and silent night.


Brightly lit and in contrast with the blue-black heavens that were outside, the spacious plaza burned with warmth and radiance, the place smothered by the familiar quality of dusty shelves and leather-bound books. Stiffly-dressed office workers relaxed in worn, homely single couches while procrastinating students busied themselves over old texts and opened hardbacks, circled by loose leaf papers of scribbled notes and pencil boxes.

Through this quiet commotion, on the far side of the Library and past the overwhelming rows of Genealogy materials, a semicircle of rooms, only large enough to capacitate two individuals, filled the entire east wall, the queue an alternating band of doors and quadrangular windows. Each sheet of glass looked into a small space with a round birch desk and a pair of plastic chairs, occasionally with a black, square machine installed for audio book listening. In the second to the last room I spotted the ever-recognizable, jet black porcupine that was the back of Sasuke's head and his companion's brunette mop of hair morphed into a pineapple.

Both of them jumped as I opened and closed the door, their alert senses evidently heightened.

Sasuke's eyes searched my face and the length of body, missing not an inch as he inspected for damage, I supposed. I offered a smile, communicating through the link of our gazes, and saw the contorted lines of his countenance smoothen out a little.

"Take a look at this," Shikamaru started, cutting through the exchange. He motioned towards the printed document laid on the tabletop waiting to be read. "I almost missed it. This was in an alternative e-mail, and the only one there. He might have forgotten to delete it. Draft folders don't usually show if there's anything stored in them, unless they're marked unread somehow."

Approaching the desk, I rested a hand on the white sheet and slid it closer, and with automatic eyes I skimmed the article, never quite comprehending the alien names and foreign numerical digits randomly clumped together. The accompanying acronyms and abbreviations rang no bell in my head.

"What is it?" I asked.

Tersely, Sasuke responded, "We don't know."

"These," Shikamaru pointed out, a finger positioned by the column of six-digit numerals, "are obviously phone numbers."

"And that?" I gestured to the last column, the most illogical of them all. "What does S4 mean? C.S.? What's Oto?"

"I'm guessing it's got something to do with their affiliation and location—where they were originally recruited. Oto is short of Otogakure. I don't expect you to be familiar with it, but it's a rundown city in the outskirts of Sound." Shikamaru went on, "S4, Sound Four at length, is an elite team of criminals rumoured to be working for Orochimaru." My ears perked up, eyes widening at the mention of the twisted madman. "Considering the police barely have any data on them, for the Rogue to have contact would them... it means they're affiliated."

I swallowed every fact of the paragraph, almost too much for me to understand. "And C.S.? What is that?"

Shikamaru's eyes flicked to Sasuke for one brief moment. "Sasuke can tell you."

I shifted my gaze to the raven-haired boy who shifted uncomfortably in the corner. He looked down, purposely avoiding eye contact. "The Cursed Seal is a band of refugees and felons who's made an agreement with Orochimaru, dubbed The Great Snake. He offered contracts: service in exchange for protection, allegiance for limitless power. It didn't always have a nice, happy ending though."

Bizarrely, Sasuke began kneed a specific point below his neck, as though a dull pain all of a sudden attacked the juncture along his collar just above his left shoulder. The massaging action was obviously unconscious, his eyes trance-like as two, onyx orbs stared at nothing in particular, wholly immersed in his mental reverie. A frown fell on my face as I watched his eyebrows furrow in pain and irritation.

I reached out a hand, aiming for the tender spot. "Sasuke, are you—?"

He tore his hand from his neck, and for one fleeting second I spied a dark blemish just above the blade of his shoulder, a much organized mark containing three circling commas encompassed by a surrounding disk of tiny black embers. It was gone the very next moment, and with startling speed fingers seized my wrist, wrapping around my skin in a vicelike grip.

I looked up to find his eyes boring into mine, but something about the glaze in his eyes said he wasn't really seeing me, as though beneath his purple-specked obsidian iris was not a film of reality, but of some other scene—in another time and place. He stared at me, catching his breath as though he'd recently run across the village and back without a single rest stop, while I stared back, blinking.

Meanwhile, his fingers became an even stronger set of five unyielding coils, tightening and tightening until...

Behind us, the scraping of plastic on rough carpet emanated, and before I knew it Shikamaru had planted himself between us like a referee, wrapping a firm, constraining grasp around Sasuke's wrist. "Sasuke," Shikamaru barked, earning no response from the Uchiha, who was far gone. "Let go."

Sasuke didn't let go.

"Let go," Shikamaru repeated, but to no avail. He sighed, frustrated, bothered. "Fine. You end up hurting her, it's not my problem."

That did it. Sasuke dropped my arm as though it was scorching metal as his eyes roamed the room, as if taking in the situation for the first time, before finally letting the bottomless pools land upon me. He looked frazzled, confused, even more than I presently was. "Sakura, I—" he struggled, aggravated. "I didn't mean..."

"It's fine," I said quickly, recovering.

He narrowed his eyes before dropping his gaze to my arm, where the clear, cherry marks of his fingers still graced my flesh. I shifted, hiding the fading remnants of his clutch, though it was too late; he'd already seen it, and a look of guilt had already flooded into his visage. "I'll wait outside," he muttered, already out the door before I could verbalize an opposition.

I blinked again. "What just happened?"

"He ever tell you about how he ran with some pretty dangerous gangs back then?"

"...yes?"

"The C.S. was one of them. He was one of these guys called the Cursed." Oh. "And don't take his outburst too personally. Sasuke just lost it," Shikamaru shrugged, as though the normal occurrence didn't bother him. "Happens to all of us."

"But not Sasuke," I told him, "I mean, not recently."

"He's different around you."

I was about to ask what he meant by that when he continued, "So about the roster, any of these names look familiar?" I shook my head. Maybe the Rogue had other business outside our game, things that didn't concern me at all. The names were meaningless to me—I didn't know any of these people, and I didn't see their connection to the circumstance at hand. The Rogue, I thought then, was my only enemy.

I'd scanned and rescanned the roll, trying to embed into my memory the names and numbers in case any of them struck a chord, though the attempt was without success with my thoughts somewhat distracted by the previous happening with Sasuke. I was not the only one who noticed.

The genius, sharp as ever, sighed in surrender. "Okay, you're gone. We're done here."

"That's it?"

He responded, "I'll try and Google each name, see if that gives us anything. Right now though, this guy looks pretty undetectable to me." He stood straight, pushing his body heavily off the table, an action that appeared to take him all of his strength to do. Low-lidded and dreary, he turned to me and drawled, "I'll see you tomorrow, maybe."

"Shikamaru? Thanks."

He nodded, and it looked as though he'd let the weight of his head drop before bringing it back up with a great deal of might. In the same moment, a question occurred to me.

"Hey," I said, "how's Ino?"

His eyes perked at the mention of her name. "Didn't you visit her yesterday?"

"I did," I affirmed, eyes softening, "But I know you went more recently. Just today." Unable to drop by after school, I'd called to check in with her parents, who told me all about the great help Shikamaru had been for the past few days, visiting every morning and even picking up necessary groceries. "How was she?"

"As well as someone in a coma can be, I guess," he deadpanned. "Her brain's barely functioning. The doctors said she could wake up any day, or she could wake up in a couple years. They're damn useless, if you ask me."

A heavy sensation weighed on my lungs, chest and shoulders, crushing me. They didn't know how long the coma would last; she could wake up in the next minute or in the next five years; but four days already felt torturously endless—especially so for her family.

Jaded, I turned to leave when Shikamaru suddenly called, "Sakura."

I halted, freezing in my tracks with a palm just about to twist the silver knob. "Yeah?"

"You might want to talk to Sasuke. He's probably shitting himself for hurting you."


We trod softly on tall, unkempt grasses that trailed round a long strip of back yards, behind the wood-panel fencing, where the last of the neatly scythed lawn met the beginning peripheries of the woodlands the city was renowned for. It felt unlawful in some way, lurking at the back of houses like this, hidden in the impenetrable shade provided by tall evergreens and low-lying shrubs, our presence unbeknownst to the people inside the abodes. Sasuke insisted we avoid the main street, stating that the Rogue could sight us from afar if he wasn't already at our heels, and as a result, at present we stole through the darkness like thieves in the night.

In the corner of my eye, I caught Sasuke sneaking glances at my wrist—in the darkness, he couldn't possibly see anything more than shadows on my skin, but that never seemed to hinder him from looking anyway. It didn't stop the frustration from flickering across his face.

"I'm fine, you know," I told him as quietly as possible. "It's not like my bones will break from one grip."

He said nothing for a long moment.

Then, nearly lost in the deafening stillness of the evening, I heard, "But you could've."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're wrist could've been broken. I could easily do that."

"A little cocky, aren't you?"

He halted, glaring at me, though against the dim glow of moonlight I realized the anger was not meant for me, but for himself. "This isn't funny. I could've hurt you."

"So? You didn't." He had turned and stomped away, my words falling on stubborn and deaf ears. "Why is this such a big deal?" I asked him, the question nagging me since we left the public library.

For the past several weeks, every hold, every gesture of protection, every consoling word in my ear left a strange, indefinable flicker in my stomach—I felt flattered and cared for and safe and... and even loved (not that I expected I was loved. It just felt that way, sometimes, and it was feeling I'd could never quite forget). But there was confusion there as well, my mind often struggling to reconcile the Sasuke who had nearly killed another boy as a child and had so viciously hated me only weeks before, versus the Sasuke whose arms have recently made a habit of winding around me, creating an ever faithful fortress. They were two paradoxes too contradicting to exist within the same person.

"You already shoved me to the ground before and practically sat on my lungs, remember?" I know not if it was an illusion of my imagination, but Sasuke seemed to flinch in the dark. "If Shikamaru and them hadn't been there, I doubt I'd have a face right now."

"That's different," Sasuke growled. He had one hand on the nape of his neck again, nails digging into the skin just above his left shoulder blade. "I would never do that again."

I inhaled, daring to pose the question. "How is it different?" I asked. "What changed?"

He kept on walking before me, finding his way through the darkness lit only by the remnants of streetlights on the other side of the street, but I caught the fleeting shock that froze him for an instant, the sudden stiffness that seemed to wrap about him.

He never answered.

As my eyes wandered from the rigid muscles of his back towards where his neck was taut with struggle, I saw his fingers clench around the back of his neck. His nails, though cut short, dug deep into black ink tattooed beneath his skin. Dark, thick liquid pooled around his fingernails.

"Stop that," I barked at him, louder than I intended. The command echoed down the alley we were in, surprising both him and myself. Sasuke snapped his eyes at my direction, shooting a look of warning and question. "You'll peel your skin off," I told him. The thought of him hurting himself didn't settle well in my stomach, for some reason.

He scoffed but lowered his hand nonetheless. "I wish I would," Sasuke hissed.

Silence long followed as I registered the weight and meaning of those four words. Ahead of us, another two blocks lay ahead. There was something about walking in the dark like this, lost in the thick shadows of the alleyway—in another lens, in another night, perhaps the same circumstances would be terrifying. But there was something about the silence, something about the way it was filled only by his breathing and mine, something about the feel of his arms occasionally brushing against my shoulders. It made me feel safe, concealed—most of all, the dark and silence made me feel comforted enough to open my mouth without thorough discretion.

"What happened?" I asked before I knew it. Unsurprisingly, Sasuke gave no answer. "With... with the Cursed Seal?" I clarified, like he wouldn't know the name of the gang he was once affiliated with. More silence. "Sasuke?"

"Sakura," he snapped. "I'm not talking about this."

"Why not?"

He looked around, eyes darting through the thick cloak of black around us. "You need to shut up, Sakura."

"I'm whispering, aren't I?"

"I'm not talking about this," he repeated, walking faster ahead of me.

About a dozen or so meters ahead of us, the faint light of my backyard loomed closer. Every hurried of Sasuke's lessened the time I had with him here. Without thinking, because my brain seemed to be absent tonight, I shuffled past Sasuke and planted myself before him.

He halted in his tracks. "What the hell are you doing?"

"What are you so afraid of?"

Sasuke shot a glance at our surroundings. "I don't know—getting killed?"

"No, I mean by talking to me."

He fixed a hard gaze on my eyes. "I am not afraid of you."

"But you're afraid of letting me in."

That did it. Sasuke, always the undecipherable iceberg whose exposed surface barely let on what lurked beneath, froze and faltered before me. He recomposed himself within half a second, but momentum from what I'd already seen drove me forward.

"I trust you, don't I?" I continued, not entirely conscious of the words slipping out of me. "Why is that not reciprocated?"

A frustrated sigh escaped the lips of my companion. "You trust me?" he posed.

And for a moment, I considered this, considered all the times he asked me this, all the times I've already more or less laid my life in his hands and had faith in the fact that he would know what to do. My sanity, my mind, would be shattered fragments right now if he hadn't risked picking up every bloodied shard.

Yes, I trusted him. "Entirely."

"Then trust me when I say I want to get you home first," Sasuke demanded brusquely, taking one step to close the distance between us and grabbing me by the arm. In the following moment, we were shuffling through the dark, towards my backyard door. "I don't like being out in the open like this."

Meters ahead, the glow of my back porch became clearer, drawing nearer and nearer as we crept along. In the same way I had headed out of the house a little earlier that evening, we skulked up the veranda, but before we could slip in through the back door I tore my arm from Sasuke's grip and swirled, shoving my face right up to his.

"Okay. I trusted you." Every clipped word sent a curl of white breath at Sasuke's nose, the warm air stuck in the small space between his weary face and my determined countenance. I was not letting this go, simply because there was so much I didn't know about Sasuke, so much I wanted to know. "Your turn."

The veranda was small, the silver railing of its stairs on both sides preventing either of us from backing away. We were concealed in the dark by the porch's roof, but while this hid us from a third party's attention, the shadows were not enough to conceal our expressions from each other. He sighed again, the breath of frustration harshly hitting my upturned face.

"It wasn't exactly the happiest time of my life," Sasuke spat. "There's nothing to tell, Sakura. It was gang—I did stuff for them, sold stuff, stole stuff, helped... helped threaten some people, because I needed the security. I needed information."

"About?"

He looked at me, a decision flickering in his eyes. When he realized I would not drop the matter, he relented, "...I'm looking for my brother," (why is that in present tense?). "But the Cursed Seal never brought me closer to him. And they... they did things, some horrible things."

"Like what?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "Do you remember the internet article we found before? About Orochimaru experimenting on people, embedding them into walls?"

I stared at him, eyes wide. "You couldn't have—?"

"No, no. I had no idea. But we... we recruited the subjects. I helped recruit them." Warily, he glanced at me, hesitation restraining his movements. "Sakura—I didn't know, I swear. Don't look at me like that. When I had even the slightest idea, I left."

I stared at him, stared at the four bleeding crescent moons at his shoulder. "Just like that? That easily?"

He shook his head, the strands of his hair brushing my eyes. Lowly, he muttered, "You don't leave a gang like that unscathed, Sakura."

A frown creased my forehead, my heart slowing suddenly from the ominous, tortured undertone of his voice. He wouldn't look at me. "What do you mean?" I asked him in a whisper, "what did they do?"

His eyes nearly drilled a hole into the wall beside my head. His body rigid all over, the warmth of his anger wrapping all around me.

"Sasuke—?"

"I tell you," he muttered, "and we never talk about this again, alright?"

"Okay," I whispered, and without a warning, Sasuke took one hand off the wall beside my head, hooked a finger under his shirt, and lifted. Before I knew what was happening, I was face-to-face with Sasuke's exposed chest and stomach, the dim light shedding shadows around the ridges and curves of muscle.

It was nothing I hadn't seen before, but it'd been a while, and seeing Sasuke shirtless in broad daylight in his own home is quite different from him flashing me in the dark and in the middle of the night.

"Um," I stuttered, heart pounding. "—Sasuke?"

"Look closer," he snapped, impatient.

I already had a hard time settling my panicked gaze, which grazed everything but the skin before me, so it was much harder trying to fix my eyes straight ahead. Bluish, moonlit skin were all that I perceived at first. I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking at, but I doubted Sasuke lifted his shirt here and there for no reason—he meant for me to see something.

My eyes wandered up and down, sensing nothing extraordinary until—right by his chest, light and shadow distorted into shapes that didn't follow what a... what a regular male chest would be shaped like (not that I had much experience in such images). There was a line much too straight to be biological across his left chest, running at about five inches, and deep enough to be marked by a shadow of its own.

And then, as my eyes adjusted to the dimness and caught more of the faint light coming off a distant porch lamp, suddenly, I saw them, these flaws I'd never realized when I came upon Sasuke that day in the group home.

My eyes widened, a sharp intake of breath through my lips.

Just below the deep cut, a shiny blotch of skin shone more than its surroundings, the patch uneven in texture and surface. A similar scar grazed near his right shoulder, and left rib, and just around the left side of his stomach, extending around his back...burnt marks. Patched, rough and scalded.

The cuts, as deep and long as the one on his chest, were spread all over his body. Some were short and abrupt, like a brief but full piercing of a blade deep into muscle and organ, while others were long and dragging, languidly shredding skin. Some were fine, others jagged and crooked, altogether creating a map of Sasuke's history that I no longer wanted to see.

"Sasuke!" I gasped, horrified.

Thoughtlessly, I brought a hand up and grazed a finger across his scars, tracing every shape, curve and line of the wounds that never quite healed right, the tortured skin rough and calloused under my touch. Subconsciously, I caught him shudder, but whether it was from horrid memories or my cold touch, I knew not.

"Their little goodbye gift left me in the hospital for eight months."

I blinked, incredulous, sickened, hurting just for him. "What?"

Suddenly, he was glaring at me. "What do you mean, what? You want me to give you every fucking detail?"

"No, I—I just—"

Roughly, he shoved his shirt back down, smacking my hand away. "Stop it," he snarled. "Wipe that look off your face."

I stared at him. "I don't know what you're—"

"If I'd known you'd agonize over this, I wouldn't have said anything. Stop it, I'm fine now."

I glance backed down at his now covered chest, but the ridges and lines of his scars still bore into the back of my eyes. Unable to help myself, I touched him again, palm pressed flat against his chest as if supposing, hoping, that touch alone could erase the disfigurements across his body. Sasuke's eyes bore into mine, fully alert and questioning, his chest harshly rising and falling beneath by hand.

A gulp ran down his throat and he opened his mouth, but instead of a barking, 'Get your hands off me,' Sasuke murmured a softer, "Sakura... what are you doing?"

I was aware of how close he was, how close we were, how my hand on his chest was practically stuck between the few inches that separated his body from mine. Whether he drew closer or I did, I did not know.

Now, however, was one of the few times I didn't care.

All I cared about, all I could think about, was the marks of pain and torture that mutilated Sasuke's skin. Because that was what the scars were from—systematic torture. I knew enough about biology, about the human body, to know that such disfigurements could not result from petty fights and scuffles.

"I wish I could erase it," I whispered to him.

A scoff reached my ears, low, angry and bitter. "Which one, exactly?" Sasuke growled, though suddenly his breath caught, anger dissipating as he sharply inhaled and fought a shudder that racked through him when I ran my palm down his chest. I imagined the scars beneath my skin, willing them to disappear with every graze.

"All of it," I murmured.

Just as my palm was halfway down his torso, Sasuke's hand snapped to cover mine, halting it in place. Silence followed, though most could be attributed to the man in front of me, seemingly struggling to catch his breath at the moment. Though his face flickered with running emotions, they were too fleeting to catch and understand in the dark.

"You don't mean that," he muttered, shaking his head. His hand tightened around mine. "You don't mean that."

"Of course I do," I whispered back to him.

"All my life," he glared at me. "I've met people who say they care but never mean it. What the hell makes you any different?"

I raised my chin, held my head high. "I'm not one of them."

If it was possible for his gaze could harden any more, drill into my eyes any more intensely, then it did so. He pinned me between himself and the back door of the porch, forcing me, almost daring me to meet his eyes. I nearly buckled under the weight of his stare, and for someone else perhaps it might have worked, but Sasuke, I supposed, just met his match. I stared back at him hard, unyielding, meaning every word: I am not one of them. I care.

"Really?" he breathed. "And why would you?"

I paused for a moment, thinking through the inquiry. Why? Why did I want so much to make him stop hurting?

"Because...because you're doing the same for me."

Something flickered in his eyes, something I did not expect. Hurt. It was gone the next millisecond. "So it's just gratitude?" he replied angrily.

But that was the problem, I thought. I didn't think it was just gratitude, but anything else this might be was terrifying even to think about. I evaded his eyes, my own landing on the marked skin between his neck and shoulders.

I moved my hand, while his own which covered mine never let go, to graze a fingertip across the three dots and jagged circle. To my surprise, the skin underneath the black ink was rough and—and raised, more so than the flesh around it. Like the burnt leftovers of tissue singed under hot iron.

My eyes snapped back to him in question, and there was weariness in his gaze. "The night I left, they branded me." He chuckled, a dry laugh of tired and resigned rage. "A tattoo wasn't permanent enough. They wanted me to remember."

My finger shook over the molten, rough circle of skin. I could barely even begin to imagine that night he spoke of, but even if I didn't want to, the image was suddenly there—Sasuke on his knees, arms held off in restraint, body bloodied and broken, a red-hot iron scalding into his flesh.

A thumb grazed beneath my eyelashes. "Why the hell are you crying?" he murmured, fingers lingering on my cheek.

I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I gasped, gripping his shoulder, my tough no longer feather-light, but firm and determined on the branded tattoo.

"I'd erase this," I muttered through gritted teeth, "if I could. I wish I could."

The statement echoed softly through the stillness and silence of the night, bouncing between us. Then, just as I thought he would never say anything, Sasuke's stoic facade slipped for one moment—and disappearing along with it, the rigidity of his muscles, the memory of hurt in his body, the anger in his voice. All of that easily escaped him as his eyes shut and the hand on his neck tightened over mine.

So quiet and subdued, he murmured: "If anyone could, Sakura, it'd be you."


I let out a breath, scared even to make the slightest sound that accompanied it. "What?"

He opened his eyes, impatience and annoyance evident in the black pools. "What, 'what'?"

"Sasuke—"

He dropped my hand, reaching around me to open the screen door of the porch. "If you're deaf," he retorted, pushing me inside the house, "then that's your problem."

Blindness welcomed us whole. As the screen slammed against the doorframe, the crash rang deafeningly within the glass walls of the room we were in, reverberating down the hall and fading into soundless echoes. At the corner of my right eye, a figure shifted.

"Sasuke?"

I felt a hand wrap gently yet swiftly around my left arm. "Right here," a voice murmured next to me, though the whispered reassurance failed to soothe an emerging qualm in my innards—the feather light touch above my elbow was on the opposite side from where I sensed movement. Whoever I'd seen, or whatever, was not Sasuke.

My heart jumped. "There's—"

"I know," he muttered below his even breath, which was so unlike my heavily accelerating mouthfuls of air. The light irritation in his voice is gone, and replacing it is a tone of order that left no room for argument. "Go upstairs." He gave me a light nudge in the direction of the hall. I did not waste a second thought. Without hesitation, I hastened down the unlit corridor, relying solely on memory to steer me around shelves, vases and other outlying furniture. Subsequent to weaving through the kitchen, I took two steps at a time up the stairs and headed directly to my room upon reaching the landing.

Dissimilar to the rest of the house, my room was the only area illuminated, what with my parents being away. It was the only place that pulsated with warmth and life, whilst everywhere else was dulled with long periods of desertion, thickly layered with dusts from the lack of attention.

Like a ghost, I tip-toed across the carpet as a strange feeling settled itself at the bottom of my stomach. The peace from our previous conversation was gone. In spite of the radiance with which my room glowed, there was a foreign shift in the atmosphere, an inharmonious rhythm that beat irregularly, unfamiliarly, as though something had disturbed the room's tranquility in my absence. Almost involuntarily, my eyes were lured to the chicly patterned curtains drawn over the windows, noticing their utter motionlessness, the fluid manner in which the textile draped from above, the misplaced hitch in between the two shades that suggested it was stirred without my knowing.

With a few strides, I stood facing the swathed windowpane, waiting, perhaps for my pulse to reduce speed, for a clatter to break the weighty silence, for something other than my hand to push the shutters back, to offer me a view of what awaited on the other side. My heart was a stampeding horde of stallions, hooves continuously knocking the ground in muted, hasty thuds. My fingers lingered merely inches away from the creamy cloth, though they were frozen in midair.

In the back of my mind, I wondered about Sasuke. My ears strained to listen for something other than the buzzing silence that filled the room and deafened my eardrums, that imaginary, high-pitched note that constantly seemed present whenever sound was not in attendance, blocking up my head until I could hear no more. Where was Sasuke?

My gaze wandering to the clock atop a shelf, I realized for the first time that it was still early. Eight o'clock. I could perceive the faint tick-tock emitting from hands of time, but beyond the walls of this chamber I caught nothing. Maybe Sasuke had already left. Maybe I was already alone.

Turning back to the window, to the curtains that covered it, I gripped the sheet and pushed it aside.

The curtains moved away to reveal a stained casement, blood-red paint oozing down the ledge from the thick, block letterings that tarnished the clear slate of glass. It took up the entire span of the pane from top to bottom, left to right, its vibrant tinge of red prominent against the blackness of the evening, sure to entrench the message into my memory, to incise the undercurrent of threat deeply into the tissues of my brain.

WHERE DID YOU GO, SAKURA?

I screamed, "Sasuke!"

Feet pounded up the stairs and across the floorboards before the door swung open with a slam. He appeared in the doorway, panting, striking features warped in alarm. "Are you okay?" Oh. He's still here after all.

I needed not to answer his question; the memo wasn't very hard to miss.

Automatically, his eyes drifted from me to the windowpane, and a lone spectacle of the bloody message explained all that needed to be said. He drew nearer, focused on the reflective film as he inspected the sodden words trickling into indiscernible streaks.

"Who was downstairs?" I inquired, eyes still affixed upon the glass.

"There was no one there," he replied, gaze still centered on the object of his attention. "Do you notice something?"

"It's still wet?" I glanced back at the window, "That he was just here?"

"More like he was just here."

Raising a hand, he glided a finger across the glass, smearing the thick, cherry substance in the process.

"It's written from the inside."

Out of the blue, shrill chimes pierced the silence.

I jolted in surprise at the same time as Sasuke made his way to where the phone lay, ringing incessantly. Picking up the receiver, he frowned at the glowing sapphire display. "That's... strange."

"Is it my dad? Shikamaru? Or Ino's parents?" I demanded, unable to identify the look on the Uchiha's facade, the subtle raise in his brow and the furrowing of his temples. "Who's calling?"

Sasuke's head rose to look at me, puzzled black waters flooding my sight and being. "You are, Sakura."

"What?" I echoed, marching en route for where he was. Grabbing the handset from his grasp, I glimpsed at the Caller ID screen.

H. SAKURA Calling

778-9686

It was the number of my cellular phone, which I had lost a few nights ago.

The last time I found myself calling...well, me, was when Sasuke had had my phone in his possession. But Sasuke was here, with me, and I couldn't imagine anyone else who might have it. A stranger who'd found it, perhaps?

With a dreadful feeling building in my chest, I touched the affirmative, yellow button and brought the telephone to my ear. For a moment only breathing from both lines were heard, as neither one of us spoke. When the wordless communication stretched long enough, I gathered up what courage I had left, withdrawing strength from Sasuke's presence, and spoke into the hand-sized device. "Hello?"

"Did you think that I was no longer watching?" I froze at the sound of that familiar, leering voice. "Where have you been?"

"...nowhere," I croaked.

I heard his tongue click in disapproval. "Let me try this again," the Rogue said, "What did you do in the library?"

"I...I just..." I stammered, struggling to get the words out. "I signed out a—a book."

"Really?" He mused, disbelief coating every syllable. "What do you think you're doing, Sakura? Are you purposely testing my patience?"

"No!" I exclaimed, "I'm not, I..."

"Then don't fucking lie to me."

I flinched. He must have sensed the recoil, for he huffed with satisfaction from the other end of the line. "If you aren't going to tell me, Sakura," the voice continued, sensual and seemingly amiable. "Then the least you can do play with me tonight."

Another round? I thought dreadfully. No, I actually thought he was done for tonight. How could I have been so naive as to think he would let me off that easily?

"But given that I already have my own kill in mind, and since I would hate to leave you out of the fun, I'm going to change it up a bit." An ill-omened tide of malice lay underneath his intonation, its low and lurking tendencies sending a fit of quivers down my spine.

"Instead of giving me a victim..." that crafty, sinister voice whispered: "You will tell me how to kill them."

I froze.

"This would spice things up a bit, don't you think? A different concept. This time, your choice is not in who dies, but how they will die." I shuddered. "You can think of the most painful of ways, Sakura. Or the slowest method. Does it excite you?"

"I'm not a monster like you," I spat out.

"See, I had a feeling you'd be uncooperative," he said conversationally, as though we were merely discussing weekend plans. "So what if I make it easier. I'll make you chose from a selection. A, B, or C. Are you ready?"

My temple throbbed. I shook my head, my breath raspy. "No."

"A—death via suffocation;" he began, the laughter in his tone of voice denoting that he was enjoying this. "B—slice his throat with a fine, sharp blade? Or C—a slow, torturous end by means of freezing? Many restaurants have storage freezers that are so accessible... can you imagine it, Sakura? Being locked in a room with a temperature thirty below, so cold that you stop shivering?"

I shut my eyes to prevent his vivid description from formulating a picture in my head, but imagination was far too rapid—in a bat of an eyelid, the image materialized in my head, as clearly as it would have before my eyes were they unclosed.

Just as quickly, the Rogue's graphic words that I was trying so desperately to ignore were cut off as Sasuke gently extracted the phone from my clutching, trembling grip.

"Let go, Sakura," he murmured gently, tenderly prying my hand away, finger by finger. When I finally liberated the phone, Sasuke raised the throttled apparatus to his ear and roared into the speaker with an unassailable voice:

"Who the hell is this?"


Uchiha Sasuke

A heavy, exaggerated sigh came from the other end of the line.

"Fuck off, Uchiha."

That voice—it was muffled, indistinct, but something about it... instantly, Sasuke was brought back to the night of the beating. He remembered the guy holding him back, the one who'd finished the attack by ultimately raining fists and kicks at him until he could no longer breathe. He remembered that voice. It was the same guy.

"What do you want from her?" he demanded furiously.

"This is our game," the bastard explained, calm and indifferent. It pissed him off already. "And it doesn't concern you."

"The hell it doesn't," he snapped. Rage rose speedily in his nerves, rushing through his veins like an addictive drug he'd simply love to unleash. Damn it, he thought, clenching and unclenching his fist. Keep a cap on it, Sasuke. "I swear," he snarled, "I'll find out who you are. And when I do, I'll—"

"Give the phone back to Sakura," the monotonic voice ordered, paying no attention to the boy's vow. "We weren't finished."

Sasuke scowled, glimpsing at Sakura's direction. She had turned away with her back to him, needing a moment to recompose, to clear her mind, yet he could still observe her hushed, repressed trembling. Nearly inaudible were her secret, silent sobs that she tried to hide from him, though he knew her too well.

"I'm not letting you talk to her again."

"Look," the Rogue began, noticeably irritated. Sasuke smirked; good, at least he was getting to him. "I don't know what the hell you're doing in her house, but I'm guessing the whole time she'd disappeared from my sight, she was with you. If you don't give her the goddamn phone, Uchiha, I'll personally make sure she gets punished for that blunder."

Sasuke stiffened. "You don't touch a hair on her head."

"That's up to you."

He huffed, infuriated at defeat. "Sakura," he called quite harshly. The moment she turned around however, her amazing, jade eyes now world-weary coming into view, dulled by rings of shadows on the skin beneath them, he backtracked. With a softer voice, he tried again, pressing the phone into her hands. "Talk to him."

She jerked away. "Do you know what he's asking of me?" Sakura whispered, her eyes begging his. "He's asking me to—"

"Just do what he says," he murmured into her hair, jamming his thumb on the speakerphone button of the mechanism.

Her eyes widened. "Sasuke—"

"We went over this already," he told her lowly, "Just do it, Sakura."

She exhaled, her breath quivering, as if bracing herself for what was about to follow.

"So what will it be, Sakura?"

A beat of silence, before she croaked, "Option B,"

"You are no fun, Sakura. Figures you'd pick the fastest, least painful road," the voice snickered. "Well then," he exclaimed energetically, with a bounce in this intonation at the thrill of the evening's new prey. "I'll be right back."

The phone clicked.

As gently as the first time, Sasuke took the receiver from her clammy hands before it slipped to the ground. They stood within a foot of each other, a heavy silence hovering in the atmosphere between them. She stared blankly at the carpet by her feet whereas he, on the other hand, stared intently at her.

"Sakura?"

Sasuke studied the slight movements of her eyelashes, the twitching of her fingers, the subtle motions of her chest as she breathed in and out. He had a feeling she would collapse any moment, therefore he waited in the wings, just in case, remaining close.

Although instead of caving in, Sakura straightened and unexpectedly darted for the door. He blinked for a moment in confusion before running after her, his fingers barely grabbing hold of her waist as he caught the girl halfway out the threshold.

"Whoa," Sasuke shouted as he hauled her back into the room—or rather, tried to; he would have been successful if she hadn't thrown a spasm and elbowed him (instinctively or deliberately) in the ribs. He grunted, though his hold on her never loosened. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Where do you think I'm going?" Sakura cried, her voice breaking as she thrashed about in his arms. "I have to do something!"

"Of course," he countered, "Go do something about that tomorrow."

She sent him a look of incredulity. "What? There isn't time. The Rogue—he'll do it tonight. I have to go now!"

"It's freezing outside," he reasoned pathetically.

She bristled, about to lose it any second now. "Sasuke, I don't care. What the hell is wrong with you? I have to do something—!"

"Like what?" he snapped, annoyed now. "You gonna come right up to the Rogue and punch him in the face? You don't even know where he is, or who he's out to kill."

"You can't expect me to just sit here and wait!"

"Sakura," Suddenly, he was livid, and suddenly, he was shouting. This girl was irritating the hell out of him and she didn't even need to try. He fastened a firm but gentle clasp on both her arms, drawing her even closer when she managed to slip an inch away from his grasp. "Could you for once stop thinking about others and start taking care of yourself? 'Cause I'm so freaking tired of doing that for you!"

It wasn't safe out there. Couldn't she get that through her thick skull?

"I never asked you to take care of me!"

"Damn it, Sakura—"

What if something happened to you?

"What if you do run into the Rogue, then what?"

"I'll stop him!"

And what if he hurts you?

What if he kills you?

"—what if I lost you?"

What if— Wait.

Sakura stared at him, her eyes wide like two viridian spheres glimmering with wonder and confusion.

Oh fuck.

Shit, shit, shit.

I wasn't supposed to say that.


Memo: As an apology for the wait, I actually added 8 pages of SasuSaku fluff in this chapter. This update was supposed to be shorter, but I added scenes at the last minute. lol For those who bother to review (& the 700+ of you who don't. lol) thank you SO much for the support & patience! Please feel free to leave a review, because every little feedback means a lot =)

Forever grateful,
Keelah

Fun Fact! DID YOU KNOW THAT

Instant Message was originally a high-school fic? Uhuh—you read that right.

I wanted to make it unique by adding suspense, but the psycho-killer plot was so minor that the characters were too busy with their high-school boy-dramas to worry about the Rogue.

When I wrote this at age 12, the story opened with an alarm clock being smashed to pieces & our heroine waking up to the start of a new school year! (I was very original).

Sasuke was in a "band" with the "bad boys" & he met Sakura at Starbucks (I used to think that's where all the high school kids hung out), and sang Jesse McCartney songs to her, particularly "What's Your Name?" right when they met (I dare you. Youtube it, imagine Sasuke and see if you'd barf. lol). Also included was practically every song in his Beautiful Soul album. Yeah, I was going through my Jesse McCartney-SClub7-Hilary Duff-pop phase.

...Now aren't you glad that virus came along? LOL How different would IM be if I wasn't forced to rewrite IM? Haha, if I had those first drafts, I'd post them up just so we could all laugh at them together. XD