A/N: A rather short chapter, I'm afraid. But I'm trying to get my mojo back as I adjust to a part-time summer job and part-time babysitting duties for my sister's daughter (very long story) :P
Her head still hurt, but at least she was awake.
Sakura lay beside her, still unconscious.
She still felt too weak to move.
It was still in the early afternoon yet the skies were obscured by a murky overcast; it was a tranquil, picturesque grassland where, occasionally, sparse travellers and traders roamed and rested yet Sarada was clouded with anxiety and despondency.
It dawned on her that they must have failed their task to retrieve the Kyuubi. Someone must have intervened – an opponent so formidable so as to demolish Sakura, knock her unconscious in a splinter of a second and cast them both far away from the clandestine monasteries of old. Sarada had an inkling of who just showed up, moments before she was about to break that seal.
It was none other than the Hokage, of course. Or otherwise known as her father, Sasuke Uchiha, had they been in a different world. Sarada sighed as she tried to grapple with the reality of their situation, their futile attempt at subverting the regime he established. With Sakura unconscious, she could only piece together vague fragments and deduce the events of yesterday (or was it the day before yesterday?).
And so she lay, on the ground, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, waiting and waiting for her companion to waken.
"Wake up, idiot," rang Sasuke's mildly irritated voice.
Boruto stirred, but he was still securely within the thralls of his dreams.
He was having dinner by the campfire with Sasuke – the non-crazy one from his own world, of course – after a long, exhausting day of training. It was a simple, plain grilled fish, rather delicious Boruto had to admit. It was shortly before the third round of the chuunin exams.
Boruto had spent the entire day struggling with his shurikenjutsu, much to Sasuke's disappointment. He felt indignant both over his inability to master the right techniques and by Sasuke's constant chastisement. That man's expectations were sky high, absurd, unrealistic, or so Boruto believed.
"Shut up, master Sasuke… Sarada is supposed to be the one good with shurikens…" Boruto murmured in his sleep.
Sasuke, the one in the other world, frowned as he heard Boruto's words.
"I swear… why are you so strict all the time…" Boruto mumbled even more. "I know… I know… My father… he overcame his weaknesses… you…"
The phrases were barely coherent.
Sasuke shook his head, mentally insisting that these were the words of a delusional otherworldly boy. Still, he couldn't really just leave the boy sprawled over a chair, sleeping, in his office.
And thus came the loud slap that instantly wrestled Boruto into reality and resulted in a loud scream: "AHHHHHHHHH! What is wrong with you?!"
"One, you wouldn't have woken up otherwise. Two, I can't exactly leave you sleeping here while I'm receiving a team of ANBU – they'll be here in minutes. Three, you were sleep talking," Sasuke exploited succinctly and, much to Boruto's ire, remorselessly.
Boruto grunted as he got up from the chair: "Well, where am I supposed to go now?"
"Feel free to wonder around the rest of the house, but this room is off bounds. And don't you dare try leaving the place because I'll know if you do," Sasuke explained.
"Great, so detention has been upgraded to house arrest? You're messed up as hell and a bastard who seems to enjoy torturing people physically, emotionally and spiritually for the sake of it. I hope you realise this-"
"Boruto," Sasuke interrupted the boy brusquely. "Out."
Kakashi knew something was wrong the moment he sensed Sakura and Sarada's chakra's as he arrived at the Land of Grass to assist Shino's efforts in capturing the Nanabi.
They were, at least according to the information Sakura provided, not supposed to be here.
He informed his team of his desire to locate Sakura and Sarada and they subsequently decided to split in two.
They were not too far away, for they were close enough for him to detect them and he was not a particularly exceptional sensor (still faintly above average though.)
Crossing his fingers in hopes that they would remain safe, he sped towards them.
"… you mean… we passed out for more than a day?" Sakura asked, still dazed and confused.
Sarada nodded, relieved that Sakura was finally awake and conscious.
"And no one noticed us at all?" Sakura sounded rather puzzled. Surely, an insurgent as prominent as her lying in the middle of nowhere was bound to attract some sort of attention.
"From what I've observed, we're at a relatively obscure corner in the Land of Grass. I've only seen a couple of travel merchants pass by and they seem way too preoccupied with their journey to care," Sarada analysed.
"Well, we've got it lucky this time," Sakura concluded. "But the Kyuubi…"
Her sense of disappointment and despair were palpable. Her emerald eyes lost all their shine and gave way to a dull, green rust that spoke of an exhausted woman, tired of life, tired of failure, tired of the world.
"I'm… I'm so, so sorry," Sarada said as she bit her lips. She deliberately averted her eyes from Sakura, being unable to deal with the tumultuous feelings emanating from the woman and within herself.
She was shaking and on the verge of tears, Sakura couldn't help but notice.
Yet Sarada opted to resume conversation, for she desired to obtain more information on the events that occurred within the derelict monasteries, asking, "So what happened, Sakura?"
The woman appeared reluctant to speak. Sarada wondered whether it was because she was still recuperating from being unconscious for so long. Yet something told Sarada there were other reasons motivating the Sakura's hesitancy.
"He came," Sakura spat with surprising venom. "He ruined everything Sarada. He did all kinds of despicable things. He dishonourably manipulated Naruto's zombie corpse, he attacked you at your most defenceless, and then he banished us with his Susanoo."
"Oh…" Sarada's voice trailed.
"And Sarada," Sakura admitted before taking a long pause. "There's something else that happened. He's got Boruto."
"What?! What happened?!"
Sarada could feel her insides trembling with trepidation. Images of Boruto suffering sifted through her head as she wondered about the state of his well-being. Memories of their argument resurfaced and she felt an unquenchable guilt creeping through her senses. He came back for her, no doubt. He must have.
"He was unconscious," Sakura explained slowly, trying to search for the right words. Sarada could tell that she was holding back on something. "I assumed Sasuke must have kidnapped him and knocked him out or something."
"And?" Sarada asked. There had to be more to this.
"Sasuke tried to bargain with Boruto's life," Sakura finally said. " He… threatened to kill the boy if we did not leave the cave."
"What did you do then? Did you try to save him?"
Now Sarada was really worried. She itched for answers.
It was her friend, her best friend, whose life was clearly in danger and she wasn't going to leave him there.
"Sakura," Sarada spoke up. "Can you… can you please tell me more about Boruto? Is he okay? Is he still alive? What did Sasuke do to him?"
"Sarada…" Sakura sighed. "Yes, Boruto is still alive. At least from what I last remembered."
"Did you take the bargain then?"
"No."
The word came with a heavy thud. The sense of foreboding that Sarada had long felt finally unmasked and manifested itself. So this was what happened: Sakura refused to leave the cave, deeming Boruto's life unworthy of saving, perhaps. Or was it out of futile resignation? Did the woman feel that her friend was doomed either way?
With all these tumultuous thoughts festering in her mind, Sarada could only muster one syllable: "Why?"
Sakura took a deep breath again, steadying herself for the explanation. "Any prisoner of Sasuke's is a dead man anyway. I'm really sorry but your friend, this boy Boruto, there was no way I could have actually saved him. I... I couldn't take the chance… I-"
"What do you mean by that?!" Sarada sounded baffled. "You could have at least tried to get him back!"
Sakura shook her head adamantly. "You don't know who we're dealing with-"
"But I know Boruto! He was… he was my best friend, someone I could always count on, someone-"
"Sarada," Sakura interrupted the girl even after seeing how she was trembling with bewilderment boarding on anger. "Sacrifices have to be made. Us insurgents, we lose comrades and loved ones all the time, but we need to reflect rationally on all our losses and, above all, persist for the greater good."
"No goal, no high honour could ever be worth the cost of Boruto's life," Sarada rebuked coldly. She was starting to feel pissed at the woman in front of her. As Sakura aimed to pull her into an embrace – out of an attempt to comfort her, most definitely – Sarada only shrunk back in disgust. "I don't need your hugs and honeyed words."
She had misjudged the pink-haired, supposedly courageous matriarch in front of her. The woman was not her mother, will never be her mother. This was someone entirely alien. The exterior features remained largely the same, but prowl inside and one would see a woman bent and battered, twisted and ruthless by decades of revolutionary lifestyle. Such is the way of this world then, Sarada concluded grimly.
"Sarada, you have to understand-"
"I already do, Sakura," Sarada responded, the sheer wintry demeanour exposing just how instantaneously all the toils she endured with this woman, all the goodwill they built up together in the past few days had evaporated. "You know, call me an idiot if you want, but I still stand by the beliefs passed down to me by Naruto Uzumaki and his team, the belief that those who abandon their friends are worse than scum. The point wasn't that you failed to rescue him, it was that you didn't try at all."
"You don't know-"
"Let me finish first," Sarada snapped. "You didn't give a damn about his life, didn't you? Well guess what? We still failed either way. The Kyuubi escaped your grasps and we're no closing overturning this regime. Well done."
"Sarada…" Sakura uttered these three syllables gently, attempting to nudge closer Sarada after she initially moved away.
Kakashi's voice, out in the distance, came as a welcome respite: "Hey you two! Are you guys alright?"
Boruto could understand why Sasuke didn't mind him ambling around the house because it was an awfully dull and ordinary place. No photos, no books save for the day's newspapers and no personal items of value whatsoever. The sofas were of a bland brown colour and the tables, desks and cabinets were of a plain and simple box-like design. The windows were covered by curtains decorated with yellow and green stripes.
It was truly indistinguishable from your average house. Small wonder why no one suspected it belonged to the Hokage.
Still, there was a sense of unease that accompanied this mundanity, almost as if no one had lived here. It bore resemblance to the typically customised houses that a real estate agent would show a client about, without any extra furnishing since the house's purchase.
There was an enigma shrouded by this mundanity. Boruto found himself wondering about what Sasuke did in his free time. That is, if the man had any free time at all.
Boruto arrived before the fridge and decided to examine its contents, for it was perhaps the only thing that had no excuse to be empty. Some vegetables, some salmon, eggs and a little milk. Boring.
He trudged down the stairs (it was a two storey house) and began comparing the place to his home. The wall that lined the stairs were furnished with photos of him, father, mother and Himawari in their house, but here it was empty. The floor was of a typical chestnut hue. Nothing exceptional there too. No luxuriant carpets, no nothing. Just a dirty white rag near the door.
Eventually, Boruto reached, what he assumed to be, Sasuke's own room. The bed was slightly larger than the one Boruto slept in, though Boruto wondered why Sasuke needed an extra bed in his house the first place. It seemed, well, frankly uncharacteristic of a man who controlled much of the continent with an iron fist. There were a couple of drawers near the bed, a modestly sized wardrobe and another larger wardrobe facing the door.
Boruto desperately tried to search for signs of life and colour around the place, to little avail. He sighed and resigned himself to the sheer mediocrity of the place. He hesitated when approaching Sasuke's bed – it was best if he stayed away.
An underwhelming sight, it all was.
He ultimately settled on the sofa in the living room, lying in it and staring at the ceiling ponderously.
Boruto felt trapped, a prisoner to boredom. A sense of agitating was boiling from within the boy as his mind wandered to his friends Mitsuki and Sarada. They were most likely still with the insurgent Hi no Ishi and participating in missions relating to the retrieval of tailed beasts, or at least that was what Boruto gathered from his conversations with Sasuke.
All of a sudden, he feared for their safety.
He feared for their lives.
Just what the hell are you doing, Boruto? He mentally chided himself. Look at you. You're resting in the house of the very man who is endangering the lives your friends you care about, friends who are risking their very lives to do something about this wretched world. And you? You're being pathetic, just languishing here, waiting for nothing.
Boruto got up and began pacing back and forth.
Helplessness, impotency and self-loathing were invading his thoughts again, poisoning all tenets of reason and rationality, infecting his previous state of comfort.
He had to do something.
But, alas, what is there to do?
They journeyed in silence towards the nearest base.
Kakashi could detect the tension simmering through the air between Sakura and Sarada. Not only did they maximise the space between them, but they also avoided all forms of eye contact.
Sarada, he could tell, was seething with rage. Her face adopted a livid colour. Her eyes, though not basking in her legendary dojutsu, still smouldered like the top of a volatile volcano.
Sakura, on the other hand, appeared absolutely distraught. Her dark circles were deepened, augmented by her misery. Her stature sagged; her shoulders slouched as she trudged lethargically through the dirt paths in the grasslands. Kakashi couldn't pinpoint whether this was due to her complete, total exhaustion, her failure, or her emerging gulf with Sarada.
It was strange, the way Sakura had become so attached to the girl, Kakashi observed. Sarada, mayhaps, unwittingly morphed into the woman's substitute daughter, her replacement for the child she never had, the child she should have had.
If only the past was kinder.
"The Ichibi, Sanbi and Rokubi have fallen into enemy hands," Sasuke briefed Boruto after finally admitting the boy into his office, which was, of course, preceded by hours of agony and aggravating sofa contemplation. "The insurgents targeting the Nanabi and Hachibi are in the process of being neutralised. The rest have failed. That, Boruto, is the pitiful state of Hi no Ishi."
"Uh… I mean, they've already gotten three tailed beasts. I don't think that qualifies them as a failure," Boruto rebutted.
"That is of no major concern. I've already sent further reinforcements. Worst comes to worst, I'll deal with them personally," Sasuke explained, his expressions giving way to something Boruto would personally describe as a smug smirk.
"Then what is the purpose of you telling me all this?" Boruto asked, his brow furrowing.
"Hn. You'll see."
A hush descended upon the room once more. Boruto's gaze shifted to his two feet, which were still steeped in his old, Konoha-emblem-patterned socks. A sense of urgency overtook him again. He needed to get out as soon as possible. Fast. But first, he needed to find a way to get to Sasuke and that's easier said than done.
"Actually, there's something I really have to show you. And no, it's not really about my own world. It concerns yours too," Boruto began, suppressing whatever instincts that veered towards hesitancy, with a grave and somber tone. It was a gamble. A terrible one. But it was the only thing that came into his mind.
A/N: And here comes another cliff-hanger. And a rift emerges between Sakura and Sarada - what will happen next? I've been planning this for a while and this sense of tension will very likely persist for longer than one might expect. Hi no Ishi is a complicated organisation - far from a bunch of morally impeccable freedom fighters, despite being morally good in the sense of Narutoverse. Thoughts?
Once again, I am deeply apologetic for my lateness in updating this story. I hope this chapter, though considerably shorter than the past few ones (which were considerably longer in comparison with other chapters), did not disappoint.
For real though, thanks so much for all the reviews and follows and favourites. Keep them coming xD This is a new record! Feel free to PM me about any beta offers or to discuss any lingering questions about this story. It's all cool for me :)
On another another note, is anyone else getting a bit tired at the new Boruto manga? The plot is progressing at a snail's pace and there's only one issue per month. Plus Sarada is being slightly weirdly fetishized. I'm seriously doubting that the manga would last very long. The anime, on the other hand, is slightly more bearable in terms of plot and pace. But for some reason, I really can't be too bothered with a bunch of academy students...
Please leave your thoughts and comments in the reviews. I'll see you all next time round!