Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters.

--

What the hell was this?

Feeling came before sight. Her head was pounding, blocking out any sluggish thoughts she might have entertained, had she the ability to think. Ummm? She dimly registered something holding her wrists, then her world faded.

The second time she came to was because someone had woken her up. Annoyingly. "Shut up," she mumbled, gritting her teeth because her head hurt so much and she really would prefer to just go on sleeping.

Someone had other plans. "Hey. Get up. Now. That's an order."

She blinked slowly, some fraction of her situation registering. "'m not your subordinate."

Something kicked her. She cried out piteously, more in protest than actual pain, and twisted her body sideways to retaliate. She tried to gather chakra into her heel, and stars exploded before her eyes.

She was definitely awake.

"My chakra's gone!" She rasped in surprise.

"Mine's been gone for hours," came the melancholy reply. Sakura moaned and lowered her head. The steady throbs had been replaced with sharp, intense pangs. She waited until the pain had faded before raising her head to stare at her companion. Sasuke stared impassively back.

"Where...are we?" She questioned, and he shook his head. "How would I know?"

Well damn. If this didn't just suck more than usual. Here she was, all chakra-less and useless once again, crammed into some tiny room without so much as a door, and she had shackles on her wrists. She was chained to a fucking couch!

Ummm.

"Are we in someone's living room?"

Sasuke blew out some air through pursed lips, visibly unimpressed with her incredulousness. Been there, done that. "Yes."

The room was crammed with furniture – coffee tables, love seats, lamps. It might have belonged to an old cat lady, if the walls didn't appear to be made of dusty stone. No door in sight. What about air?

Right. Okay. Living rooms were okay. She could deal with living rooms. Living rooms were familiar territory. They weren't worth panicking over. If she panicked, she would shorten their air supply. Not that she would have to worry about that...she had just decided they had plenty of air.

Sasuke looked around the room with detached calculation. "I think this place is airtight."

"Fuck!" She exploded. "Fuck, Sasuke, we're going to die!"

"We are not going to die," he said, giving her the same looked he had when they were twelve and she had just done something stupid.

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. She was okay. They were okay. This situation was okay. She'd been in worse. She tilted her head back and squinted at the ceiling.

"Sasuke," she said suddenly. "There's a door up there."

"I know." Of course. "If I could activate my sharingan..."

He let his sentence trail off. She studied the almost invisible square in the ceiling. It about four by four feet. No handle. It opened from the other side. Obviously.

"...do you think Kakashi and Kankuro are all right?"

"Probably not."

Had they been different people, he would have lied for her.

She swallowed against the burning in her throat. She would have to be stupid and naive to believe their attacker had a shred of mercy in him.

But she had always been stupid and naive, anyway.

And stupidity usually went hand in hand with being emotional.

Fuck the rules. She was already everything the rules told her not to be.

"Hey. HEY." She strained all the muscles in her throat. "Where the hell are you!"

"Sakura, what the hell."

She threw back her head and screamed as loud as she could.

"Sakura!"

"Keep screaming. I'll claw your filthy little eyes out."

--

She was screaming. What the hell was wrong with her?

And the ceiling was moving. Huh.

"Sakura!"

She went on, heedless to the urgency in her voice. The trap door fell open and a high, lilting voice floated down into the cramped space.

"Keep screaming," it said silkily, sounding almost female. The fine dusting of hair on the back of Sasuke's neck raised and he automatically shifted into a crouch. His drained muscles screamed in protest, a thousand needles rippling along the entire length of his body. "I'll rip your filthy little eyes out."

That sounded familiar.

Sakura was shaken up, but not stupid. Her mouth had clamped shut the moment she heard something, and her fists were held up in front of her in a classic defensive position. Her eyes narrowed and focused in sync with his own.

"Come down," Sasuke said flatly.

He had about half a second's warning, then there was a flash of color and his head snapped back, followed by a burst of blood in his mouth. "Sasuke!" He blinked slowly, face blank, then turned his head to stare at the figure that had suddenly materialized. "Overkill," he said calmly to the twisted face so close to his.

"Don't tell me what the fuck to do," the other hissed.

Sakura was rigid beside him, trying to figure out what had just happened. "Where are they?" She asked immediately, eyes flashing to Sasuke's face.

He switched his attention from Sasuke to her. "Who?" He said, sounding genuinely curious.

Her face darkened. "My friends."

"Oh. Them."

"Yes, them," she snarled. Sasuke pushed his weight against her shoulder warningly. "Where the hell are they?"

"That really depends on what you believe in. Where do you think they are?"

"Why did you target us?" Sasuke interrupted. Sakura was seconds away from snapping, and if she snapped, they died. Self-preservation was a basic skill, and he knew that the best course of action would be to focus on not setting this guy off. And setting him off was apparently quite easy.

The man smiled and tilted his head, immediately serene. "What will you give me if I tell you? Not the girl, she belongs to the Kazekage, and I don't want to get him involved, no...not your eyes, I don't really want them, disgusting things..."

Sasuke briefly wondered, as he struggled to get a hold on the hot flash of anger that had suddenly reared up, why this guy thought viewing Sakura as a sexual object would piss Gaara off, whereas kidnaping and murdering her was A-OK. Sakura wisely kept silent, though he knew she was bristling. Or disturbed.

"Anything you want to know," she said in a low voice, apparently tired of being kept out of the conversation.

"Is anyone else in your clan alive?"

"No," Sasuke said. "I killed the only survivor a few months ago."

"I don't really believe you," the man smiled tightly. "But I'll find out anyway, just wait.

--

When Kankuro opened his eyes, they burned. Ouch. A thin phlegm clouded his vision, and he blinked hard. This worked well until he sneezed, hard, and his brain exploded.

Well.

"Kankuro!" Something gripped his arm. Wait, he could feel his arm? Oh good. He wasn't poisoned.

He slowly began the agonizing task of rolling his eyes. Temari was staring at him. He raised an eyebrow. "Um...hey."

"Moron," she snorted. Yup. Good old Temari. No 'Hey, you okay?' or 'I was so worried!' "Stay here, I'm going to get a medic."

By the time she had returned he was sitting up in his sterile white cot, experimentally flexing every joint in his body. So far everything worked. He glanced up, half-expecting someone to scold him.

"They say you're free to go," she said, voice edgy. She was watching him a little more closely than usual. "Not like they could have kept you here long anyway, but..."

He swung his legs over the side of the cot, grimacing when his head throbbed at the sudden movement. The hospital staff had been considerate enough to let him keep his clothes. Being the Kazekage's brother had its perks. "So where's Gaara?"

Temari sighed. "He's gone out with a search squad."

Kankuro frowned and said, "For what?" at the same time he remembered. He froze.

"For Sakura," Temari said, taken aback.

"Oh," he breathed. "Oh shit, Temari."

"Yeah, I kinda feel like that too."

He stared at his gloved hands, then his sister. "What about that white-haired guy? Her teacher?"

"He found you a little way away from the ANBU headquarters. He left with Gaara. So did Uzumaki and Shikamaru."

Kankuro closed his eyes wearily. "Just like old times, huh?"

--

"What are you doing?" Already she sounded resigned, like she was only asking because that's what people did, usually.

"I'm setting out," he answered briskly, and shoved some protein bars into a drawstring bag. "Medic says I'm fine. I think I'm fine." He stopped packing and looked at her. "...you look fine." You coming?

She sighed irritably, standing in his doorway with her hands on her hips. "I am."

He returned to packing. "You got a bag?"

She snorted. "I'll share with you."

Share a bag. Like they used to when they were little and formed a united front against their terrifying baby brother. They had been a duo, as opposed to the trio they were now. And maybe a quartet soon, the way things are going.

Assuming their fourth member wasn't dead.

He shied away from the possibility, pushing it to the back of his mind where it couldn't burden him and the mission. The rescue mission, because she was alive. Obviously.

He pulled the drawstrings and slung the pack over his back. "Are we ready to go or what?"

--

She later learned her head hurt because of the drugs they were injected with every few hours, which completely nullified their chakra. Extremely crude, maybe, but nonetheless effective, especially considering the man's limited resources. She could struggle all she wanted, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never feel so much as a spark of chakra. It was like she just didn't have any...like she was dead.

The chains connecting her and Sasuke to the moldy beige couch were about four feet long – they could barely touch each other, if they wanted to.

Her stomach had just started to burn with hunger when he dropped into the room, landing crouched on a small coffee table.

"I forgot," he said, blinking at them. "I promised to give you an answer, didn't I?"

Sakura decided it would be smarter to just not say anything. Let him come to his own conclusions.

"You asked why I'm going to kill you." He looked at them expectantly, and was visibly disappointed when they just stared stonily back. "Well," he continued. "I used to have a wife."

And she realized what a maniac you were? Or did you kill her before she could? Sakura closed her eyes wearily. The poor woman.

"She was never pretty, my darling, but so smart. And strong." He stopped and inhaled deeply though his nose. She suppressed a shudder. "But she was also stupid, because she fucked that bastard Uchiha, Fugaku."

Her eyes flew open. What?

He smiled appreciatively at her. "Yes, that's what I thought, too. But she did, and then she ran away when he wouldn't divorce his wife. I imagine he only slept with her for her clan secrets; she specialized in Suiton."

She turned numbly to look at Sasuke. He was staring frozenly ahead, expression blank. Oh God.

He went on calmly as though nothing had changed. "I had some time figuring it out. Ichi left me a note saying she had left, but she apparently didn't think I cared why. I followed her the night she left. She made the mistake of saying goodbye to Fugaku."

"And you killed her?"

She hadn't meant to say anything, but the raw shock of the past few seconds had furrowed beneath her common sense. His eyes focused on her and hardened.

"No," he spat. "I alerted the hunter-nins and let them do it."

"You..." Sick fuck? Twisted bastard? God, why did she even care? Gaara...No, none of that. Just shut up. Don't think. Don't feel. Just survive until someone came and freed them, and she could run away from the apparent hell that was her life.

"But then the next night the entire Uchiha clan was murdered." He rolled his eyes over to Sasuke. "By your brother, no less! I left the village for a while. Imagine my delight when I finally discovered that not only had two sons survived, but a bastard daughter as well."

Bastard? Is that what I am? Everything was detached, fuzzy. Like she knew what was going on but only half-cared.

"I'm surprised the sharingan even showed up in this one." He inclined his head towards her. "I never would have known if they hadn't." Big smile. "Lucky me."

--

How long had he been watching us? Why didn't anyone notice? And why did it even matter? They were probably going to die. Unless he wanted t keep them prisoner forever.

"Sasuke?" She couldn't believe she was asking this. "Didn't you ever notice?"

"That my father screwed around with other women? No, I never noticed," he said flatly. He had been uncharacteristically fidgety since their kidnapper left.

"But how could you not?"

"I was seven."

"So?"

"Why do you even care?" He snarled, going from indifferent to furious in a second.

"He was my father too!"

"And we're going to die because he was a complete slut!" He hurled the words at her, screaming. She recoiled automatically. It was the most emotion he had shown in months.

His heavy breathing filled up the silence.

"...it's unhealthy to keep that stuff inside you. What else have you got in there?"

He stared at her, then deflated, closing his eyes. "You are so annoying."

"I'm your sister," she reminded him.

"Half-sister."

"Sister, regardless."

"I think Kakashi is alive," he said suddenly.

She blinked rapidly. "Really?"

He gave her a sour look. "I think. He was fighting a clone. He's not that useless."

So there was hope. "Where do you think we are?"

"He couldn't have dragged two unconscious bodies far."

And he was probably listening to them right now. How disturbing...

There could be people looking for them. Right. Now. Shinobi could come dropping from that little hopeless square in the ceiling at any second.

She hoped Gaara didn't come with them. He was far too valuable to his village to accompany a rescue mission. But then, part of her (the part she denied existed) was praying he came...craving to see him again.

She also hoped they came for her before her next shot. Her thigh was starting to ache...

Her wrists were rubbed raw, too. She pulled carefully at one chain. With chakra, she could easily rip it in half. Maybe their kidnapper would slip up and drug them a few minutes too late. That would be all she needed.

And if Sasuke could gather enough chakra to activate his sharingan...

She squinted at the trap door. It had just become a possibility.

--