Sakura, having been a member of Team 7 for quite some time, was not used to lengthy silences. Having Naruto around wasn't conducive for the kind of quiet that Sasuke seemed to be fond of. She had berated him all those times he had argued incessantly with Sai or whistled with nonchalance at times when it was really not appropriate. However, now that Sakura was so deeply rooted in the deafening silence of Sasuke's presence, she really missed Naruto.
He hadn't spoken a word to her for hours. After Kabuto had kissed her and run away, Sakura packed up her tent and followed Sasuke like the puppy dog that she was. She had still only gotten a few hours of sleep and she was exhausted to the point where conversation probably wouldn't have come easy to her. Still, though, there was a tension in the silence that was far from comfortable.
She wanted desperately to address the kiss, to explain to him all the weird things that had happened between her and Kabuto in Konoha. Her instincts told her that Sasuke wouldn't care about any of that, but at the same time, his demeanor had obviously shifted since he had witnessed a portion of it.
Did that meant he cared about her? Maybe. Was he curious? Probably not. He would have asked her about it – she was sure.
He was just a few steps ahead of her, his cloak billowing behind him. There was something sinister about him now, something dark. It was mirrored in the way the trees seemed to almost gravitate toward him, hollowing out the forest with his mere presence. There was a perpetual fog that floated around them, darkening and dampening everything. It was the same country she had seen many times before, but it had never felt this heavy.
Though she felt silly for even thinking it, Sakura felt inclined to believe that the creepiness of the woods was directly related to Sasuke's mood.
But perhaps she could cheer him up.
"Sasuke-kun?"
His steps did not waver and he did not speak. He turned his ear slightly toward her – the only indication that he was listening, but it was enough.
"I couldn't help but notice that you have a lot of tension in your body," she stuttered, glad that he wasn't facing her so he couldn't see the furious blush burning in her cheeks. "I could get rid of it for you. You'll feel more relaxed and it'll make traveling a little easier."
Sasuke stopped, causing Sakura to nearly bump into him. He turned halfway to look at her, his red eyes curious and sharp. "You mean like a massage?" he asked skeptically. Though his expression was still as stone, Sakura could imagine his eyebrow raised.
"No, no!" she said hastily. "I mean I could if you wanted." Sasuke's head tilted ever so slightly to the right. Almost undetectably, Sasuke's eyes dipped down away from hers, scouring her body with that Sharingan of his. His gaze felt like a splash of hot water.
"I meant with chakra," she clarified, reaching deep down inside of herself for the solidity of her voice. "A jutsu."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
Sasuke turned to face her fully and reached up to his throat to unclasp his cloak. "Let's see what you can do," he said. Sakura watched with the most horrified delight she'd ever felt as Sasuke removed his cloak and folded it over his arm.
"Well, this is hardly an indicator of what I'm capable of," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She felt rather self-conscious thinking that this simple jutsu would be the one he based his new opinion of her on.
But Sasuke didn't seem to care. He watched her expectantly, unnerving her with the sharp focus of his gaze. With hands that were trembling so badly she could feel the motion all the way up her arms, Sakura reached up to touch his chest. There was a sort of implosion inside her – a wave that crashed over her and turned her organs to mush and her tongue to molasses. Her fingertips were pressed intimately to the plane of his chest, the hardened muscles beneath his tunic. She became acutely aware of how intimately close they were standing.
But as soon as her chakra seeped into his muscles, her apprehension morphed into triumph. The look of immediate relief on Sasuke's face was as much gratefulness as she would get out of him, but it was more than enough. His body relaxed under her touch the same way Kabuto's had just a few hours before. Even though it was a procedure she had done many times to many people, this time was hands down the most satisfying.
Being the astute medic that she was, Sakura couldn't help but also send of surge of diagnostic chakra into him as well. It had been years since he had been in Konoha and he could be in any kind of condition. She realized that he had been in Kabuto's care for all that time, but Kabuto was only interested in Sasuke as a vessel and not as a living being. Though she trusted that Sasuke could handle himself, she couldn't help but want to make sure that the bespectacled man hadn't done something nefarious to Sasuke's body. After all, he had planned on implanting Sakura's seal. God knows what other sick things he could have done.
Sasuke was aware the second the color of her chakra had shifted. He reached up to grip her wrists and shove her hands back into her own chest.
"We need to keep moving," he said pragmatically. "You can do that later."
She had already finished by then, but she didn't argue. A second was all she needed to surmise that other than a few tense muscles, Sasuke was in perfectly good health. He turned back toward the path and began to walk, not bothering to check to see if Sakura was following him.
She was, of course. And she felt far more optimistic about this whole thing.
/
By nightfall, Sakura had nearly collapsed with exhaustion. She couldn't even remember what a good night's sleep felt like and the immense effort required for her to keep up with Sasuke must have shown on her face.
"There's a small town up ahead," Sasuke said, tossing the words over his shoulder. "We're going to stay at an inn tonight. Tomorrow morning we will need to buy some proper cold weather gear and another tent."
Inwardly, Sakura breathed a sigh of relief. A town meant a post office, which meant she could get a message back to Tsunade explaining the situation. Hopefully it would reach her in time to let Kabuto off the hook before something happened to him.
"Cold weather gear?" Sakura asked. "Where are we going?"
"You'll see," he said cryptically. Had he been anyone else, Sakura might have snapped at him. Wasn't it enough that she was following him wherever it was he wanted to go? Why did he have to keep her in the dark about it?
But even though things weren't quite as tense now that Sakura had relaxed him a little bit, their bond was still fragile. Sakura didn't want to risk breaking it so soon into the journey.
So she followed him obediently, not daring to speak another word. It was strange that she felt so much more comfortable in Kabuto's presence than she did in Sasuke's. But at least with Kabuto, she wasn't afraid to snap at him, to be annoying, to be herself. It didn't matter what Kabuto thought of her.
She suddenly felt a gut wrenching guilt twist up in her stomach. She hoped she could get her message to Tsunade in time. She was beginning to feel really, really bad for Kabuto.
She shook thoughts of Kabuto from her head and refocused her attention on Sasuke up ahead. Up in the distance she could see the outline of a windmill against the night sky, surrounded by smaller, shorter buildings.
When they had reached town and checked into the modest inn, Sakura witnessed something incredible. Sasuke had chosen a single room with two beds for them, which Sakura didn't find too surprising. It was cheaper and safer this way with them together.
What did surprise her, though, was Sasuke's posture. No sooner than the door had shut behind them did Sasuke shrug out of his cloak and toss it onto the floor. His shoulders drooped with a weight Sakura was sure she had never felt before (and she had felt some impossible weights on her shoulders). He lugged himself over to the bed nearest the window and let his body fall unceremoniously onto the mattress. He was perfectly still, staring blankly at the ceiling above.
It came as a shock to her to see Sasuke so relaxed and cavalier. Even in their genin days he didn't often let Sakura and Naruto see this side of him. He must have been just as exhausted as she was. After all, he had just killed Orochimaru the day before. Perhaps the battle had taken a toll on him.
"Are you alright, Sasuke-kun?" she asked, taking a step closer to the window. She tossed her pack onto the opposing bed, feeling like her only chance for recovery as far as their relationship went was now.
Sasuke didn't answer. He didn't even look at her. Her instinct was to feel irritated, but she had come to expect this from Sasuke. It bothered her, but she did her best to let it roll of her shoulders. Instead, she pressed her palm to the cool glass of the window and stared out at the sky behind it. It somehow looked different outside than it had moments ago when she had been out there with Sasuke. It looked as if some cloying, mesmerizing wind had blown wildly through the trees, taking with it the creepiness that seemed to hang in the air before.
"Why did Kabuto kiss you?"
Sakura coughed and then cleared her throat. She could feel her face heating up again. "I, uhh, did something kind of fucked up to him," she explained. "I think that was his way of getting even."
This seemed to pique Sasuke's curiosity. He sat up and pressed his back against the headboard. He was silent for a moment. He glanced through the window and then finally to Sakura's face.
"What did you do to him?"
Sakura winced, which drew an even more curious look from Sasuke. How could she explain to Sasuke that she had kissed Kabuto out of some crisis-borne horniness, some l'appel du vide that made her lecherously attracted to a man who was her enemy? And for the very reason that she shouldn't be attracted to him! She hated to admit those things even to herself. Speaking the words aloud could only confirm what she already knew – she had screwed up. Kabuto was out there alone somewhere, agonizing over his loss, fighting for his life, perhaps even pining after her, Sakura thought with just a hint of self-indulgence.
"Sakura? What did you do?"
"We had been working together for about a week," she began to explain. "I needed his help with something in Konoha, something that required more than one set of hands. Anyway, I got really sick of his smug sense of superiority, so I kissed him. Just to see how he would react."
Sasuke's eyes hadn't left her face for a second. It was the longest he had ever focused his attention on her. His expression was unreadable, but something told Sakura that he was the slightest bit amused. "How did he react?" he asked.
"Not well," she said dryly. "He did not like it."
Sasuke laughed. The sound was dark, but light at the same time. It was velvety, and flowed over her like a rush of warm water. It made her feel buoyant and bright and the tiniest bit happy. She made him laugh.
She soaked him in then, the half quirk of his lips, the measured amount of amusement he had deemed appropriate to show her.
"He's following us," Sasuke said. "Following you, I suppose."
"He is?"
"Is he going to be a problem?" Sasuke asked.
"No, no, of course not," Sakura said quickly. She didn't know that, but she didn't want Sasuke to do something drastic like try to kill him. "I'm sure we can lose him."
"He said ANBU would be after him," Sasuke countered. "We can't have ANBU on our tail."
"Well, what do you suggest, then?" Sakura snapped. Sasuke was visibly startled by her tone. Sakura didn't know how he had been treated in Sound, but she knew that he wouldn't have expected her to snap at him like that. He was stoic, but he was still observant. It would be hard to miss the fact that Sakura had had a crush on him for many, many years.
Sasuke didn't speak. His eyes moved back to the window. She gleaned nothing from his expression, but she assumed he was thinking of ways to alleviate the Kabuto problem.
Sakura sighed. "Listen, I can get the ANBU off Kabuto's back," she said. "If that's the whole problem, then you won't need to worry about Kabuto."
"It would be simpler to kill him," Sasuke suggested.
"I mean that's one way to go," Sakura said nonchalantly. Sasuke didn't seem to be buying it, but Sakura couldn't tell for sure. "But he could still be useful later, right? It would be a waste of his talents to kill him."
"Since when do you care about Kabuto?" he drawled. If his gaze hadn't been so sharp, Sakura might have believed he wasn't too interested in the conversation. But she didn't miss the way his eyes narrowed slightly as he awaited her answer.
Sakura scowled. She didn't like the question or her answer to it. She didn't like Sasuke's smugness and she didn't like feeling guilty. First love aside, Sakura was now annoyed, which was an interesting turn of events all things considered.
"You know what?" she said dryly, "You're right. I have no more reason to care about him than I have to care about you."
Sasuke was frighteningly silent in response. His lips were pressed together in a tight line and there was a dullness in his eyes that was backlit by bitterness or hatred or some other unpleasant emotion. Sakura couldn't tell if that look was because of what she said or because that was just how he always looked. She was inclined to believe that later.
After an awkward and painful minute of silence, Sasuke finally looked away from her. "Do what you must to keep the ANBU off our backs," he said to her. "In the morning we'll supply up before we go."
He didn't give her a chance to respond to that before he stood up and crossed over to the adjoined bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. Sakura wasted no time removing her dirty clothes and diving into her bed. She wanted to be long asleep before Sasuke came out of that bathroom.
In the morning she would go to the post office and send a message back to Tsunade. Kabuto would be absolved of his wrong-doings and Sakura of her guilt. She could go with Sasuke until Naruto had caught up to them and then…
Well, and then hopefully they'd get their teammate back.
/
Sakura woke before the sun came up. A quick glance at the window told her the sun would rise in maybe an hour. With another furtive glance in Sasuke's direction, Sakura found his chest rising and falling in a deceptively slow cadence. She couldn't really tell if he was asleep or not, but it didn't matter.
She tossed the covers onto the floor and made her way to the bathroom for a shower. She still reeked from a full day of traveling and she wanted to relish the opportunity to take a shower while she had one. She had no idea how long it would be until she could use one again.
Once she had soaked in as much steam and soap and silence as she could, she wrapped a towel around her body and opened the bathroom door only to be faced with a drowsy wall of Sasuke.
She shrieked and took a step back, surprised to find him so close. His gaze on her was sharp and she didn't quite understand why, but she understood enough to move out of his way.
He sidled past her into the bathroom, pausing for one second. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but his mouth remained shut. For the briefest of moments she noticed his eyes flash red, Sharingan come and gone in an instant. She narrowed her eyes, suspicious of why he would do that.
Then he slammed the bathroom door shut in her face.
Sakura sighed with irritation and then quickly began to dress herself. She didn't know how long Sasuke would be in the bathroom, but she wanted to be gone when he came out. She needed to go to the post office, but she couldn't let Sasuke see her send a message to Tsunade.
Once she had clothed herself and piled her damp hair on top of her head in a messy bun, she quickly made her way outside and ambled to the post office. The town was incredibly small – a post office, an inn, a couple of pubs, and a tiny bathhouse. It was almost charming in a way, but Sakura didn't think about that as she lugged open the door to the post office.
She paid for the requisite items to write a letter and began to describe to Tsunade the events that had happened since she left the village. She could imagine her mentor's face as she read each line – fury, frustration, worry, irritation. Sakura was glad to be sending this in writing instead of speaking face to face. Tsunade probably wouldn't have allowed her to go with Sasuke in the first place, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
When she had finished and left the letter with the clerk at the desk, she quickly walked back to the streets outside. She hoped to be back at the inn by the time Sasuke was ready to leave. If he asked where she had been, she would only say that she had taken care of the ANBU problem.
Unfortunately, a familiar face on the street ahead of her indicated that perhaps that pan wouldn't work out.
"Kabuto," she said a little breathlessly, but unsurprised. Sasuke had said he had been following them. Had he slept at the inn? He didn't look so refreshed. His clothing was rumpled, his hair in a state of disarray. And he looked wildly angry.
"Hey, listen, I send a letter to Tsunade-sama," she said quickly, hoping mitigate his anger before he could speak it. "It'll get the ANBU off your back. You're in the clear now."
"Great," he said dryly. "That'll bring back my dead mentor."
"What do you want from me, Kabuto?" Sakura asked wearily.
"I lost everything because of you," he seethed. "You kidnapped me, brutalized me, made a deal with me out of sheer desperation, and then left me with nothing. And these weird mind games you keep playing. I want you to pay for what you did."
Sakura took a deep breath, trying to calm herself a little. She could feel an impending fight, feel the waves of fury radiating from Kabuto. She honestly didn't blame him.
"Kabuto, I'm sorry for—"
"Save it, Sakura," he said, shaking his head.
"Killing me won't change anything," she argued, a little desperate. Fighting Kabuto would surely bring Sasuke's attention, and Sasuke would kill him. He already wanted to, and this would just cement his decision.
"I don't want to kill you," he said. "I just want you to suffer."
Sakura's eyes narrowed. Yes, she'd done her part to make Kabuto's life hell, but it hadn't been intentional. She didn't believe she deserved to suffer for it and she didn't believe Kabuto was right to want that.
What she did know, though, was that if they fought here in the middle of town there would definitely be casualties. She needed to get away from the civilians before Kabuto launched his first strike.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Sakura darted off toward the tree line. She passed the post office and the inn, praying that Sasuke was still in the shower and oblivious to everything that was going on. She could feel Kabuto hot on her heels, but she didn't turn around to look at him.
Once she had reached the trees, she could feel Kabuto's chakra just behind her. She screeched to a stop and whirled around to face him. She felt livid, absolutely burning with hatred for him. The feeling nearly pushed down the guilt she felt in the back of her mind. He was going to try to hurt her, not for any logical reason, but just because he wanted to see her suffer.
He looked just as angry as she felt, his teeth clenched so tightly she could see purple veins throbbing in his forehead. He was panting, though not from exertion but sheer frustration.
"What am I supposed to do now, Sakura?" he demanded, his voice airy like he was out of breath.
Sakura spread her feet shoulder-width and raised her fists.
"You got what you wanted, didn't you?" he asked, taking a step toward her. "I helped you when you needed it. I didn't attack anyone. I held up my end of the bargain."
"And I appreciate that," she said with her most placating tone. It felt strange to be placating him and even stranger to feel like she hated him again. It was as if their kisses, their flirtations had never happened. They were enemies again. "It's not my fault that Sasuke killed Orochimaru."
"But you didn't have to leave with him," he argued. "You were supposed to go back to Konoha."
"I got the ANBU off your back," she snapped. "I don't know what else you could want."
"You sent a message to Tsunade," he said. "You don't know if she'll listen to you. She could send ANBU out anyway, and she probably will."
"I think I know her better than you do."
Kabuto's expression darkened, and Sakura raised her fists a little higher. Kabuto reached into his pouch and pulled at a handful of kunai. He launched them at her and then sped forward toward her.
Sakura dodged the kunai and darted between two narrow trees, hoping to use the woods to her advantage. Kabuto chased after her and caught the hem of her skirt in his fist. He yanked her down to the forest floor, kicking up leaves and dirt. He moved to straddle her, to force her to stay down on the ground, but that was a foolish mistake.
With fists packed with chakra, Sakura punched his chest hard enough to send him flying off of her. She felt the crack of his sternum under her knuckles. Usually she would have felt sickened by such a feeling, but this time it felt good.
She leapt back up to her feet and sped past him, weaving in and out of the thick trees to try to lose him. For just a tiny second, she considered what Sasuke had wanted to do. It would have been the easy way out to kill Kabuto – like putting a sick dog out of its misery. The thought saddened her, but the more rational side of her wondered if it really was the best course of action.
Even if it turned out to be, she couldn't bring herself to do it. She knew she wouldn't do it. She even felt guilty for breaking his sternum.
When she cautiously turned to see his location, the guilt dissipated. He was behind her again, running toward her at full speed. She could see the faint glow of medical chakra in his chest – a true testament to his skill level. It didn't even seem to be slowing him down.
And unfortunately, Sakura felt another chakra signature approaching very quickly from the direction of the town.
Sakura cursed. She couldn't let Sasuke catch up to them. He would kill Kabuto for sure.
Without warning, she stopped, allowing Kabuto to catch up to her in a matter of seconds. He had more kunai in his left hand and she could see the beginnings of a hand sign on his right.
"Wait!" she yelled, wincing as he stopped so close in front of her that she could feel the whoosh of air around her body.
His face was still scrunched in fury and pain, but he froze at her request. "What?" he bit out through clenched teeth.
"Sasuke is coming," she said breathlessly. "He's going to kill you. He wanted to kill you yesterday. If he catches you, he's going to kill you."
"Since when do you care?"
"Funny," she said dryly, "Sasuke asked me the same thing and I didn't know what to say."
They stared at one another for a moment, each roiling in their own emotions. In her head, Sakura couldn't imagine a scenario that ended well.
When she saw Sasuke's figure come into view, his Sharingan blazing, she gave up on the idea that one existed.