two: heart sigh.
SAKURA LANDED ON water. More specifically, she felt her feet sink into something that felt and smelled suspiciously like swamp water—swamp water which, if she recalled correctly, was on another side of Konoha entirely and not where she had intended to go. In hindsight, she hadn't had much of a goal in mind to begin with, just to escape Sasuke and the hell that was probably waiting for her upon his return to the camp. But on the other side of Konoha, in one of the murkwater swamps closer to Iwagakure? She had vastly overestimated the distance the seals could teleport her, leaps and bounds past just from a chair to a desk. Her chakra, minimal as it was at the moment, was a little low but not nearly empty enough to make her tired, which meant the jump hadn't taken too much out of her for some reason—a contrast to the volumes it took to make her reach a destination she actually had in mind.
The journals hadn't said much about what she could expect with the seals, and she had experimented with them a bit before the invasion, but she regretted not looking into them more thoroughly when she had the time. She could barely remember which ones she had sewn into the pack and which ones she had slapped haphazardly onto any trees that looked noteworthy enough to consider landmarks and made a mental note to sit down and sort through her things when she was settled somewhere far, far from Konoha.
But, her constant perusal of the blueprints reminded her that there was a base not too far from the border of Konoha. One of Orochimaru's older bases, if she recalled correctly, one that she hadn't been planning on visiting if she could help it. It was one he didn't use often but kept up conveniently to store a myriad of poisons, test subjects, genetic material, and, if his layouts were still accurate, a lab with the ability to synthesize artificial chakra. She didn't know what a man like Orochimaru would be doing with theories to create artificial chakra, seeing as he needed little of it himself as a sannin, but it was an intriguing thought—if she could just use it, it would save her a lot of trouble until she could manage to work up her chakra reserves enough to get her through hours long battles and manage healing if she was wounded.
Which, even in her head, was easier said than done.
Ever since she was a baby, Sakura had been a bit of a slow blossom to bloom. While her mind exceeded any and all thresholds given to it, her body was a different story. It was slow, fragile, weak; unable to keep up with the relentless training inflicted upon it. Once she had been unable to run even twenty feet without losing her breath, but now she could run miles and miles without stopping for even a gasp; and yet, while she made sure her body was in tip top shape years later, her chakra system was very much not.
While her control was precise and ridiculously strong, it was not enough to force through the blocked points in her abdomen and chest. They were narrowed, almost as if they were being choked, and even Tsunade herself had no explanation for it besides a possible genetic issue that may be passed down through DNA. She had been a bit nicer, then, when she hadn't a clue who Sakura was (or developed some intense slight against her later on). After that, Sakura had tried forcing them open, but to no avail; she had been ill for weeks with something nasty, and she mentally connected the blocked chakra to her immune system, but any further theorizing had been forgotten in the face of new research.
Sakura rocked back on her heels and glanced around the swamp. It was unfamiliar, but she couldn't be too far from the base itself, since it was close to the border but not exactly far enough away to warrant her to worry about being caught. The patrols didn't venture this far out, and judging by the interesting weeds growing in the mud beside her ankle, it hadn't been traveled through in some time. And though it smelled of rot and mud and held an overall fishy odor, she couldn't detect much else—her nose was good enough for that, at least, a strange side effect of one of Orochimaru's many jutsu she had experimented with a few years ago. Gnats and swamp flies buzzed around her head impatiently, drawing her attention from her surroundings for a few brief moments as they eagerly dove towards her sweat and water soaked body.
Without much thought, she swung her pack to her chest and looped the straps over her shoulders. With it backwards, she could unzip it and find one of Orochimaru's journals—one she recalled had more specific notes about the hidden lab, written in a stupidly difficult code that had taken her a bit too long to figure out. She had deciphered it just before the Akatsuki had razed the village to the ground, and just in time, too, it seemed, because she was going to need that base. For a little while, at least; she didn't want to stay in it too long unless she wanted to risk being discovered by Orochimaru or, even worse in her mind, Kabuto. The base was probably riddled with traps, but she would deal with that problem when she got to it. Right now, getting out of the open was more important, however a niggling thought in the back of her mind told her that Tsunade didn't care about her enough to track her down like a rabid dog. Sasuke, though—now he was going to be an issue.
Maybe I shouldn't have antagonized him like that.
She gnawed a thumbnail between her teeth, ignoring the unpleasant crunch of dirt and sand grinding beneath her molars, and used one hand to flip the journal open unsteadily. The delicate pages revealed countless black lines of Orochimaru's handwriting in that same code she despised, but she continued paging through it regardless with a flick of her wrist until she found somewhat familiar groupings she recognized on sight. All thoughts of Sasuke fled her mind when her eyes landed on a small bullet point list, with a cramped header that read, in code, MS-820. Bingo.
It read, simply, that the base was chock full of medicines and other things she really didn't care about right now, and she skimmed the rest until she found what she was looking for: a single sentence, almost insignificant in meaning, but it meant more to Sakura than the rest of it. Between boughs of crimson red flowers, where the snakes dwell. She knew exactly where red flowers grew in that gods damned swamp, and more importantly, she knew what snakes lived there, too: a venomous sort that was too aggressive to be approached safely for an antidote and a specimen Sakura had seen in glass jars, preserved by formaldehyde and other fluids, only in Orochimaru's labs. She regretted not taking one with her, but she didn't have much time to dwell on it; they were likely destroyed and caved in now, with only a crater where Konohagakure once stood.
She returned the journal to its hiding place and fished out a small bottle of water. She took a quick sip, careful not to spill a drop, and began to make her way through the swamp carefully. It was filled with mud and eels and other animals she could make out with her chakra if she tried hard enough, and it tried to suck her deeper every step she took. Her shoes were soon gone, no matter how hard she tried to keep them on, and while she continued on with her feet bare, she could feel twigs and roots and unpleasantly warm mud squishing through her toes and enveloping her ankles in a warm embrace. She cursed herself mildly for not checking the seals, but once again, her brain derailed and drifted to other things, focusing largely on one thing that was bothering her more than it should.
Itachi Uchiha. Throughout all of this, he was a variable she couldn't quite understand. Sasuke's vengeance hadn't resulted in his death, as she had suspected, much like everyone else, and something about it seemed strange. Sasuke had been so determined to kill his brother that she had expected to see a corpse somewhere in the forest; and yet, he had returned to the village empty handed, claiming to have killed Orochimaru, even offering Tsunade his heart as proof—but only Sakura knew, and maybe Tsunade, that Orochimaru wasn't dead. He couldn't die, truly, not as long as Kabuto lived and breathed… and perhaps a few others, if she was being generous. His journals said as much. But Itachi… that one stumped her. He was still alive, and while he wasn't a traitor to Konohagakure as Danzo wanted everyone to believe, he had stilled murdered the entire Uchiha clan in cold blood, and she had assumed that Sasuke would never forgive that. Yet he did, and he had; not that she knew Sasuke particularly well, if at all, but she thought she had known that part of him well enough. It was foolish of her to think so, in hindsight, but the past was in the past, and she had an inkling that Itachi was going to be a big problem for her, loyal as he was to Sasuke… and to Konoha.
Sasuke hadn't said a word about his brother since his return, but Sakura could read between the lines easily enough. And her little digging into recent informant reports had panned out with her guess as truth: he was alive. At least for a little while longer. He was ill, the report had said, but with what, she couldn't guess, only that it was terminal. It had been written by an ANBU operative, so the rest had to have been relayed verbally since messages were too easily intercepted—case in point. But she had enough information to do some theorizing and guess work until she had a solid plan on how to deal with the Uchiha without earning herself an early grave. If they knew what she had done, they would kill her regardless of what she knew, affiliation with Orochimaru's jutsu or not. And running into them on accident would be disastrous any way she looked at it, because Konoha would want her back for defecting, and she would either be imprisoned or, to her slight horror, sealed inside a scroll and placed upon Tsunade's desk. Or in her tent, seeing as the village was gone now; her worst nightmare, in any case.
And, besides, if she had a set of sharingan to play with, all the better, though she loathed experimentation on live bodies. She would just have to take them out, somehow, and leave them crippled. That would be better than killing them, in the end, and it would also prevent Orochimaru from having them in the same breath; but it would also deal a heavy blow to Konoha. Not that she cared much, but with Danzo still skulking about in the shadows (how he wasn't dead, either, she didn't know, but she hadn't found hide nor hair of him when she had been sent to clean up the battlefield) she didn't feel particularly secure. Orochimaru's notes on him, scathing and full of hatred, had told her exactly what Danzo was capable of, and what he was up to. Oh, not that Orochimaru hadn't tried to escape him before, he had written, but the old man was clever, but he was not powerful. And yet now he was, and with a weapon that would kill them all. What it was—well, it wasn't her problem. It was Konoha's, at any rate, but Sasuke likely knew what it was, having fought him before.
I really should have picked his brain before I left, she thought sourly, stepping over a sprig of mint she couldn't bear to squash with her dirty feet. How it was growing there, she couldn't say, but it was resilient, and so she moved past it.
Soon, she happened upon the flowers, but they were sparse and not as lively as they had been. They still writhed with snakes, though, and she avoided them as deftly as she could, but there was no sign of the two trees. In fact, there wasn't even a door to the base at all, or an obscure tree trunk that hid the door.
No, there was just a giant, sunken sinkhole full of water and mud and trees and debris wider than Konoha was tall, and no trace of even a brick or vial in sight. Her stomach churned unpleasantly as she watched the bubbling water respond to even more things sinking to its dark depths, her heart thumping in her chest with painful beats, and she mentally counted to ten as the muddy water swirled around a loose trunk, before turning on her heel and marching back the way she came.
She had wasted a whole night and morning for nothing.
Impulsively, and angrily, she fingered the transportation seal on the strap of her pack, emotion fueling her actions for the first time in a long time, and before she could even take it back, to think long and hard about her actions, she was gone, the swamp vanishing in a rush behind her. Her mind wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, as her body catapulted through space and landed on something hard—hard and with a silky smooth texture, falling into her mouth and down her throat, itching and burning and choking her—
Sand. She was choking on a mouthful of sand.
With a rush of chakra that made her throat hurt, she keeled over and vomited, ignoring the warm flush of her lunch against her feet and tried hard to blink away the tears forming in her eyes. Her nose clicked in place harshly, and when the sand was mostly gone and her stomach painfully empty, she straightened unsteadily and touched the bone gently. It was broken, and pretty badly, but she shoved it back in place with a strangled scream and sealed it together with hastily placed chakra. By the gods, did it hurt, but she couldn't bring herself to dwell on it, or the way it was curving slightly to the right and more into the visual field of her right eye. It would hurt, and it would bruise, for the next three weeks or so, but she couldn't spare the chakra to mend it more thoroughly. She felt like her reserves had been squeezed through a crack in a wall; wherever she was, it was far, far from Konoha, and anger had not been a sufficient enough replacement for the price.
When her mind finally caught up with her, she wiped her mouth with her shirt and scraped her feet through the sand to get rid of the vomit and mud on her toes. The hot sun had dried it instantly, though, so now she smelled like death, and rot to boot. Her hair felt hard and crunchy with sand, likely full of swamp water too, and when she pulled a strand forward, it wasn't pink, but a dark brown. She grimaced and shifted her shoulders, her pack still very much present thankfully, and glanced around at her surroundings.
Sand, sand, and more sand; she really shouldn't be surprised. But Suna? That was days away from Konoha and not an easy place to survive without a team and gear. Things she didn't have; but she could make it, if she could just figure out where she was… The sand dunes weren't a particularly good indicator, and the sky was clouded with heavy dust that prevented her from seeing the sun properly, but if she was right, she was a bit westwards of Suna—but she couldn't go to Suna, either. And Orochimaru only had one base here, but it was on the other side of the desert in a place she couldn't reach, and was most likely occupied. Her only option was to find a smaller town, probably a merchant shack if she could, and get there before the sun went down. There was no way to survive the cold nights in Suna, of that she was certain, and she didn't have a tent with her to block the winds from touching her skin. Cold sand was as bad as hot sand, and she was far too tired to deal with that in her current state.
No, she needed to keep moving, stay hydrated, and find somewhere to sleep for the night. Then she could rest, at least for a few hours before she continued on her way. If memory served her right, if she got out of Suna, the next available (and abandoned) lab was Amegakure. Her luck was really, really awful; Ame had been the last place she wanted to go, but now it seemed like she had no choice. She may have had better luck staying in Konohagakure with the rest for a few months and then finding her own way out later. But she couldn't have anticipated the seal's finicky nature, or Sasuke chasing her down seemingly by his own volition… no, not at all.
Sakura touched the seal and closed her eyes bitterly when she felt the broken lines. There would be no more teleporting for her, for now; the seal was spent until she could redo it and she didn't have the time to rifle through the journals and her own notes again to make a new one. The next one she would put on her skin and not the bag, but for now, she would find shelter, eat—she squinted at the sun—a very late dinner, or lunch if she was generous, read the journals and figure out just what the hell she had to do next to stay alive, and then sleep like the dead, in that order.
But first and foremost: shelter. She walked for what seemed like miles, in circles if her eyes were to believe, and by the time dusk was closing in, almost a whole day after she had left Konoha, she happened upon a small little lean-to. It wasn't fancy, and was made of what looked like rock and cloth and dry twigs, but it looked warm enough to keep her through the night. A small fire pit had been dug out near it, however the charred sticks within indicated no one had been in the area for a few days or so. The wind would have swept it away otherwise.
Sakura was small enough that she could wedge her entire body inside it and remain somewhat invisible to approaching shinobi. But she wasn't entirely unexposed from the elements, either, however it provided decent enough coverage and she wasn't one to complain… much. She had no real food with her except ration packs and nutrition bars, so she tossed the pack down and worked on transfiguring hard blocks of sand into wood for a fire. It worked well enough, for the most part, but when she had it lit up and going, it didn't quite burn like fire should. It was just a little cooler, but not by much, so she fished out her rations from her bag and poured a little water into it to moisten the powder inside.
When she took a bite, the texture was horrible, but it tasted faintly of pancakes and maple syrup and nothing more. It filled her stomach, regardless, and she watched the fire crackle and pop for some time, her mind peacefully devoid of thought until her eyes landed on a small wire notebook sitting askew outside of her bag, as if begging for attention. When she picked it up, shifting the ration packet to one hand, she was surprised to see it wasn't a journal of notes like she'd thought when she shoved it in the bag, but one of Jiraiya's novels—except this one was a title she didn't recognize, had no idea existed and hadn't made publication most likely. It was a manuscript, she realized belatedly, and she placed it on her lap and paged through the first pages.
The Sun and Moon, her mind read for her, and her eyes went wide at the artfully drawn—but no less raunchy—image plastered in the front in black and white. Though the faces were tastefully obscured, she would recognize Tsunade anywhere, and the black haired male could only be Orochimaru, the both of them locked in a passionate embrace, the blonde nude and appearing as if she had a halo around her head, and the equally as interesting snake sannin dressed in robes and with a shard of the moon behind his head.
Interestingly, it was a full novel, and while the cover image was… exactly what she expected of Jiraiya, a quick look into the contents revealed it was anything but raunchy. Or tasteless, as she'd called the Icha Icha series. It was actually quite serious, with an intriguing plot line, but she had to wonder: what was this doing in Orochimaru's lab? And one full of jutsu, at that? He didn't seem like a very personal man, or emotional at that, so when she flipped to the back, she found handwriting and in a pen she didn't recognize.
Happy Birthday, you snake. Told you I'd finish a novel one day.
It was dated nearly thirty years ago, right around the time Orochimaru had been exiled from the village. Her chewing slowed to a pause. Actually, it was the very day he had left: his birthday. She had read enough of his files to know when his birthday was, and it was very interesting that he had the book at all; but he had left it behind, and that was telling enough. But it could also provide insight into the three sannin that she would never have, written in Jiraiya's own hand—because it was a love letter to a friend if she had ever seen one, and if she could twist this to her own gain…
Oh, Tsunade would rue the day she ever crossed paths with her, Sakura thought gleefully, and dove into the novel, rations forgotten, and a charcoal stick flying across a piece of paper with notes and timelines and—curiously—a little statement that Jiraiya had made that stuck out to her strangely.
Amaterasu (Tsunade) may have guarded her heart against the mysterious moon god, but he snuck in through those cracks regardless, made his home there despite her pleas, and possessed her love even though the sun, moon, and stars eventually stopped turning.
It all indicated that Tsunade had once held a flame for Orochimaru. Or still did, and it fueled her hatred for him, knowing what he had become, perhaps; and in a twisted turn, Jiraiya held his own flame for her, as well, forming a wickedly codependent unit that proved to be too much for all of them.
Much like she, Naruto, and Sasuke would have been, had they not all parted ways. Had Sasuke not left. Had Sakura ignored the quiet fusing of Inner Sakura and the rolling ambition within. Had Tsunade not rejected her.
The realization hit a little too close to home, and with a jolt to her belly, she slapped the manuscript shut and shoved it in her bag. Her rations were cold, but she still ate them, and thought about mailing the damned thing to Kakashi just to get rid of it. But she wouldn't do that, not really. Instead, after a moment of hesitation, she fished the manuscript back out and tossed it into the fire, blackmail and manipulations be damned.
She watched the cover roll up and melt, the paper turning black and curling up at the edges, pieces of soot floating into the sky and vanishing into the dark sky. When it was completely gone, she tossed the empty ration packet in, too, and without waiting for it to melt, she shoved her bag to a corner and laid down on her side, her back to the fire, and closed her eyes, intent on ignoring the gaping hole clawing her heart open.