She sees him diving down from the cliffside like a spearhead, black mane blown up out of his face; the eagle takes flight. No hint of fear in his dark eyes. No flinch of muscle. Perfection in its mightiest form. She's frozen in her trail up the whistling slope, green eyes glued to him, the air stolen from her lungs the moment he drops into the lake far below with a thunderous splash.

If only she could be so fearless.

Iruka shouts from the top of the cliff, "Great form, Sasuke!" and the rest of her classmates babble in agreement. Surfacing near the bank, soaked to the bone, Sasuke's eyes meet hers. Surprised, Sakura offers a shy grin. Everything about him is deep and mystifying; a leopard staring straight at her. His dark gaze slips away without so much as blinking. She promises herself that she will remember it forever.

The moment Sakura's bare toes find the edge of the grass outcropping her entire body locks up, Ino laughing somewhere behind her before falling deathly quiet. The silence has Sakura defensively coiling in on herself, arms guarding her middle with a hug.

"I can do it! Just wait!" Sakura shouts, gawking at how far down the lake is, horror knotting her stomach taut. How did Sasuke just. . . drop? Her knees are shaking. "Don't push—"

Two hands find her shoulder blades and gently send her over the edge. Too frightened to even scream, twisting to see whoever dared betray her, Sakura watches as Sasuke's steely gaze disappears upward. She freezes and can't unthaw, wind whipping at her hair and clothes, the enveloping boom as she breaks the water's surface violently reviving her. Spluttering, tears in her eyes, organs still sliding back into place, Sakura clambers up the lakeside in a dripping heap. She hears her classmates' laughter above and tilts her head back. The sunlight is ungodly, water in her clumped lashes making everything brighter.

Sasuke is staring down at her like a hawk, a looming, black monolith. He isn't laughing, but he might as well be. Embarrassment beats a pulse in her eardrums.

"Get down here so I can beat you up!" Tearing herself off the grass, Sakura points at him with a muddy hand, tears pricking her eyes. "Jump!" Who cares how pretty he is? She's going to kick his ass. "You hear me? Jump!"

The small smirk twisting the side of his mouth up has Sakura feeling like she's falling all over again.


The mountainside is dusted in snow, white blankets crisp as snapdragons chilling the soles of her boots. Sakura looks over the flank of the arête they're tightroping and feels her stomach clench like a child's. Ahead of her, Sasuke's crunching footsteps come to a stop.

"Do you see something?" he asks. Sakura shakes her head and slips her attention back to him. Leaning over, Sasuke peers down into the valley to take a look himself. After a moment, he offers a solemn, "Me neither," and turns, continuing his trek along the mountain's spine. In the distance, over the jagged teeth of Shimo's gnarled highlands, the sky is pregnant with thick clouds. Though it hasn't reached them yet, Sakura smells the storm on the wind as it blows back her hair. Emerald eyes flicker to the dark mane settled feet ahead. That smell could very well just be him. Or her. Or a memory.

"Have you been here before?" asks Sakura, stepping in the footprints Sasuke leaves in his wake.

"A long time ago." He takes a second. "There's an outpost a few miles east. We'll reach it before the storm arrives." A hint of reassurance laces his mellow voice, low enough to rumble in her navel. They've traveled far north from Konohagakure up into Frost Country, Sakura more or less trailing Sasuke wherever he decides to go. He hasn't divulged where exactly they're heading, but it doesn't matter. She'd been ordained to take a leave of absence from field work ever since the war ended, despite her bickering otherwise. Sitting around Konoha doing nothing is as painful as popping soldier pills every five hours—much worse when she allows herself to remember.

War stole whatever sense of peace she may have once experienced alone in her apartment with only the sound of an air conditioner running. It's gotten to a point where Sakura can't remember being that way to begin with: relaxed, content, satisfied with nothing. Capable of appreciating time spent with herself. When Kakashi speaks of her genin days it feels as if he's describing someone else, someone she's never met before, only for Sakura to realize that little girl was her. It isn't upsetting. Most times it's merely unnerving, unreal.

Now, finally given the opportunity to escape, her body and nerves are alight. Something thunders in her guts that's too deep to identify. Only the tremors can be felt: warnings of distant disruption. They're exciting. Sakura knows well enough that they aren't real, but being able to pretend becomes more valuable as one ages.

Sakura likes to pretend the war is still going. She likes to pretend all of the tension in her muscles is justified and soon— very soon will they be able to spring and unfurl themselves. Sakura likes to pretend all of the carnage and atrocity and death didn't affect her but it comes out every night while she sleeps, not with nightmares but with violent fantasies. She pretends she isn't any different from the little genin smell testing shampoo bottles with Ino in the late evenings, not some monster who craves the calamity of war.

But she is. And she knows she is. So it's more appealing to pretend.

Sasuke, though—he makes it real.

Her stomach is still prepubescent-hot from him accepting her companionship. All this time apart and now they are so close, his mere presence a spoil of war. If Sakura were to speed up she could even touch him. Beneath his cloak he is broad and imposing, far from the spindly, knobby-kneed teenager she'd fawned over in the academy. If only he didn't have a sword to hide and a stump to cover, he could unveil his hellbound body to her starved eyes. She could count the scars marring the flats of his hips. See the hand that cleaved shinobi into pieces. The sword that ended countless lineages. She could run her fingers over it all. She could pretend they are trying to kill each other again, this time with only their mouths to sport—

A nip of cold wind on her flushed face brings her back down to earth.

She should try not to mingle sex with violence so often. Her brain will conflate the two more than it already has.

They travel east in silence. The longer the quiet stretches between them the more Sakura's mind has chance to wander. It roams through the valleys and up the hillsides, over the snow-capped mountains and their dark, bared teeth. It winds around a memory long repressed of a small, pretty boy falling from a cliffside, his black eyes finding her behind dripping bangs.

It wanders back to Sasuke, of course, because doing so isn't heretical anymore. Not as much. It isn't like she can feel shame, but it's nice to pretend. Gaze burning into the back of his skull, boots crunching through biting snow, Sakura takes a deep breath. She smells storm clouds.

"How are you holding up?" His low voice commands her shoulders to hop. Sasuke turns his head to look back at her over his own.

"I'm fine," Sakura answers. "Cold doesn't bother me."

Sasuke's unshielded eye roams her inquisitively. "You're sure?" he asks. "Konoha is home to warmbloods." The term is something she hasn't heard of. Then again, they've hardly spoken the past five years. Much longer than that if she were being realistic, but she isn't.

"Warmbloods?"

Sasuke faces forward. "Konoha nin." There's a ledge ahead and he steps off without breaking pace, landing silent and smooth as a cat. Sakura drops down beside him with equal finesse.

"When did people start calling us that?" she laughs incredulously. A dark eye flickers toward her and Sakura nearly lunges for his throat with her mouth. Not knowing if he will reciprocate her ferocity is the only thing keeping her teeth in check. She isn't so dense as to wonder why he allowed her to come in the first place, but it's fun to pretend. Perhaps he enjoys it, too.

"Orochimaru did," says Sasuke. "Does."

Well, that makes more sense. They lapse back into silence.

"Cold doesn't bother me," she repeats. Sasuke acknowledges it with a wordless nod. She catches him eyeing her briefly, then he looks away.

It begins to snow before they make it to the outpost, Sakura yanking her hood up to keep her head warm. She remarks on how Sasuke is going to freeze if he isn't careful to which he simply snorts. They arrive at a worn-out cabin swaddled in cedar trees, the shadow of a dismantled chimney looming in the growing darkness. There's a stack of firewood against the left side covered in snow and obviously long forgotten. Sakura makes a face. Behind the cabin a few meters back is what looks to be a burnt up dog run, though it's difficult to be sure. The amount of snow blanketing its charred skeleton means it's been destroyed for quite some time.

Why on earth did he bring her here?

"This is the outpost?"

"Yes."

There's a moment spared while she looks the cabin's face up and down. Above the front door, hanging from a drooped awning, a set of wind chimes dangles. Sasuke stops at the top of the steps and looks at them. While it's subtle, Sakura can tell by the glint in his eye that he's curious about them. Why, though, she has no idea. Porch steps creaking beneath her weight, Sakura stands beside him and admires his striking profile. There's snow in his hair that should be brushed off. Her hand burns with temptation—and her mouth.

"What is it?" she asks, hoping the sound of his voice can stave off her gnawing desire to touch.

"Hm." Reaching up, Sasuke taps a chime with one finger. The tubes are frozen solid. "Forgot to put it up," he murmurs. A frown flitters across his face. He turns to open the front door. Blinking, examining the wind chimes for herself, Sakura wonders when on earth Sasuke had found the time to decorate a place like this—even with something small. Any sentimentality at all seems too much for him. He is odd, though, and everything he once avoided is now safe to reminisce in a way. Is he reverting? She has no way of knowing what sort of child he was before the massacre, and she is also content with not verifying that inability.

What Sasuke looks like beneath all the damage he's accrued, Sakura can only speculate—and only so often. Standing quietly by the front door, watching him gently brush dust off the table, she realizes—almost in horror—that he is completely at ease right now.

Her chakra spikes. Head lifting, Sasuke looks at her. His signature remains flat and unassuming, disarmed. Simply looking.

How things have changed between them.

"When were you here last?" asks Sakura. Her gaze sweeps over the inside of the cabin disapprovingly. A single bed sits against the right wall with a large bag stowed beneath it. Hardly a place she'd consider fucking in, but beggars can't be choosers.

Sasuke moves toward the mouth of the fireplace and crouches down to inspect something. "A year ago," he answers. A flash of orange signals his Katon, Sasuke rising to face her; a hellhound backlit with flames. Sakura's heart jumps into her throat. "We'll stay here. The storm will hopefully blow through by tomorrow."

Sakura balks and looks down at the space around her feet. "Is it sturdy enough?" Looking up again, she sees Sasuke's eye is trained on her boots.

"Of course it is," he says. His black eye darts up. "You should let your boots dry." Beneath his cloak, Sakura notices Sasuke's stump move. His chin lowers. He motions with his right hand toward the fireplace. Seems he's still getting used to the disfigurement. Sakura barely remembers it herself at times. "Sakura."

She realizes she's staring at his left side. "Huh?"

"Hurry up."

A muscle somewhere in her abdomen twitches with familiar annoyance. "Don't boss me around." Don't give me an excuse. Approaching him and the fireplace, she begins taking off her boots. Sasuke's eye is on her feet again, watching her, his signature lazily undulating. "Yours are wet too." When she's close enough, Sakura reaches up to brush the snow from his hair, seeing him stiffen at her touch. His mane is coarse and cold against the pulp of her fingertips, perhaps the only thing on his person that has yet to change since their youth. Forever untamed—a different sort of barbarous than the rest of him, or maybe just the last part of it remaining. She gets caught in a tangle, then another, and another. A breathy snort flares her nostrils. "Gods, Sasuke." He's staring at her with a blank expression, squinting when she yanks too hard but otherwise docile. Isn't he going to stop her? She's practically preening him at this point. Their faces are close despite him making no effort to stoop. Meeting his eye, Sakura offers a shy smile.

"What?" he asks.

She shakes her head and takes her hand back, placing her wet boots in front of the fireplace. "Just your hair."

"What about my hair?"

Sakura notices the curious glint is back in his eye. Charming. Have they ever discussed something this pointless?

"It's a mess. Yours and Naruto's."

Sasuke frowns at the accusation. "His is worse than mine," he contends, voice plummeting an octave. A grin tugs the edge of Sakura's mouth up. He's cute when he's huffy, reminds her of the little genin he used to be way back when, all hot and bothered and sour-faced. Clinging to his dignity. Unsure of himself.

Vulnerable.

Chakra lances up her spine.

"You both need help," says Sakura, slipping past him and meandering over to the bed. Sasuke snorts dismissively behind her. For a moment it feels like they're kids again, stuck on some mission while Naruto and sensei are out foraging. The illusion shatters when Sasuke's impressive pillar of a body appears on her right, using his lone hand to retrieve the bag from underneath the bed. "What's that?"

"Supplies."

"As in?"

"Food. Whetstone. Seals. Soldier pills." He continues his rummaging, Sakura flanking him attentively and trying to sneak a peek at whatever it is he's searching through. "Incense. Coffee. Clothes."

"You drink coffee?" You carry incense?

Sasuke's face turns toward her, gaze trained on the floor. ". . .I brought it for you," he admits. "I wasn't sure if you do." The high suddenly hits; his modesty ignites a feral blaze in the pit of her stomach and Sakura bites out a laugh, more surprised than anything. It comes out sounding cruel, even to her. Sasuke's expression hollows. A sharp pain hits her stomach when he looks away. Manufacturing a smile, she places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes contritely. A lone eye finds her from behind black, knotted bangs.

"Thank you, Sasuke. I would love some." A tender lie; she will play along. It isn't often Sasuke brings her offerings. What's it been? Fourteen years? Fourteen years since he pushed her off that cliff because her body refused to move. His greatest offering of all. Sakura's hot palms are ready to send him over another edge, if she can manage to find it. A low hum of acceptance draws her out of her head. Slowly, just as hesitantly as him, Sakura slips her hand off his shoulder.

They settle in front of the fireplace while Sasuke heats a pot of water, slouched beneath his cloak toward the pit. Sakura watches the flames dance shadows over his smooth-cut face, the lack of hair adorning his jaw catching her attention briefly. When had he managed to shave?

"Do you drink coffee?" she decides to ask, the empty air grating her nerves. He answers with a nod. Ah, so they're both playing along. A fair start, if she must be dignified about this. "Good," she lauds. Sasuke glances at her, then down at her lap, then returns his focus to the fireplace.

"Naruto says he wants to cut his hair short."

Sakura snorts. "Did he?" She doesn't bother hiding her amusement. Sasuke doesn't look up.

"Should I?" he asks.

"No," blurts Sakura. Absolutely not. A rumbling chuckle vibrates her insides.

". . .So," he murmurs, "you do like it." It's nearing a whisper, soft, almost teasing. She can hear the smirk on his face. Sakura sucks in a quiet breath. Seeing Sasuke so like—this. It's painful and she's not sure why. Her teeth itch at the bob of his Adam's apple. Why can't he swallow loud enough for her to hear?

"Would it matter either way?" Say yes.

The fire crackles. "Perhaps," answers Sasuke. It's as much as she expects he'll compromise.

Good boy.

"It isn't combat efficient," Sakura notes. He listlessly blinks, maybe brushing off another disappointment in private. "But there's no combat anymore. . ." They're both very still and very quiet. Sasuke seems to have gone a touch more rigid beneath his cloak. "Sasuke?"

"Mm."

"Do you. . ." She hesitates. Even now, after so many years preparing for this moment, the words are difficult to escape the thicket of her throat. Sasuke turns his face fully toward her, patiently drifting amidst the ensuing silence. Anchor dropped. It's generous of him—and disquieting. "What do you think of out here?" More ambiguous than she'd planned, but the ambiguity functions well enough as a smokescreen. "Do you dream about anything?"

He isn't dense. He'll understand if he decides to admit as much.

"Dream about?" he parrots. She nods. "What's the use of dreaming when you can do?"

It strikes a chord inside of her, one that agitates. "Not everything I want is possible." Perhaps he's more dense when it comes to simplicities. Sakura can believe that. At her right, Sasuke shifts.

"You were always ambitious. What is it you want?"

Her teeth on his pulse, his fingers inside her ribcage, the breath leaving their lungs ragged and furious while that mauve eye pierces her forebrain like a spearhead—

"Things," she deadpans. Apparently noting her heated stare, Sasuke cocks a thin brow. "Just—things."

It's obvious to anyone how avoidant she's being and such realization disrupts her enough to make Sakura grimace. Sasuke studies her only a second longer. They both drink coffee in silence and pretend it doesn't taste bad. Sakura's mind wanders in the absence of stimulation, out the cabin door and past the log pile, around the corner and back to where the bones of a burnt something rest beneath layers of snow. She smells storm clouds. Her gaze slips to Sasuke's face, the orange glow of the fire reflecting bright in the pit of his dark eye. She presses her tongue against the backs of her teeth and hums.

"What's that thing out back?" she asks. Sasuke blinks and furrows his brow a smidge. "The thing that burnt down."

"Nothing important," is his clipped answer.

"What was it?"

He sighs and tilts his head back, then he's staring into the fire, expression wiped barren. "I'm not sure." Sakura watches a ghostly scorn darken his eye, the same haunted look he wore throughout childhood. She traces the rim of her cup with her index finger.

"Did you do it?"

Sasuke turns to her but his attention is on the floor. "Yes." There's a beat of silence. Something passes behind his eye and the darkness lifts. "It's nothing important," he repeats, perhaps more to himself than to her. While interrogating him for a clearer answer appeals to Sakura's more primal machinations, she mercifully relents for now, that quiet pain beneath his surface successfully fending her off. The fire crackles as its teeth bite through a fresh log.

"Do you ever think about it?" The question tumbles out of her mouth before Sakura can snap her teeth shut, unable to take her eyes off the fireplace, entranced by flames. There's a distant rumble deep in her guts. A warning.

Sasuke hums and it buzzes inside her marrow. "About what."

The cabin groans like a bear trap being set. "War," she murmurs. The word seems to carry through the room, as if space must be made to accommodate its imminence. Sasuke is quiet. The fire crackles.

"Who doesn't?" he asks in return. A grin twists her lips up around an amused breath, breaking out of her intense stare to find Sasuke caught in his own. "It's not something people can just forget."

"Do you want to forget?"

The silence has her fretting she's pushed too much. Sasuke lifts his chin and looks straight at her.

"Lots of questions you're asking." His cadence carries a threat.

"Lots of time to catch up on," posits Sakura, deep and bated. Angry? she almost sneers. Sasuke stares at her from the corner of his eye, the fire dancing shadows off the perfect cut of his nose. She can see the hesitant outline of a scowl he's willing back.

"Why ruminate over the past? The past is gone." The way his voice comes out lilts into pleading territory, as if he's commanding and begging her simultaneously. Sakura's stomach coils hot.

"The past led us here."

"The past led to war."

Sakura's green eyes glimmer, looking at him with her chin down so low her eyelids kiss her brow. "Yeah," she exhales. Sasuke's mouth draws thin. "It did, didn't it?"

Her hands are at his shoulders.

She feels wind in her hair.

"Enough, Sakura."

Something hot brings her teeth down on the end of her tongue, Sakura flinching beneath her skin and turning back to the fireplace. Her hands retreat.

"Alright," she concedes.


To her surprise, Sakura wakes up before him, the storm outside a pack of howling wolves that warm her belly with thoughts of sensei. Sasuke is where he was hours ago, cross-legged on the floor with his back against the wall, head stooped forward an inch too far to feign wakefulness. The sight itself is enough to make Sakura's neck ache. She should rouse him and trade spots, but she doesn't.

Rolling onto her side, Sakura instead watches him through the darkness. So defenseless is he in his current contortion that Sakura could attempt a strike—just to see what he does. Make him move. Garner some reaction to validate her existence, specifically her existence's effect on him. The pads of her fingertips bump together along her meandering thoughts beneath the sheets. What would he say if she did? What noise would he make? How would he defend against her? Would he kill her on instinct alone?

Fucking wouldn't be enjoyable if she died before it even started, and she doubts he'll have interest once she's a corpse—probably.

War does things to people, though.

"You're awake?"

His voice rings an octave her ears are trained to detect, Sakura jumping despite herself. "You're awake?" she dumbly counters. There's a brief flash of red from Sasuke's face, then it's gone.

"I should hope so," he mutters, skull thumping against the wall behind him. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long."

"Ah." Something creases between his brows. Sakura can't tell what emotion brings it on; he can't possibly be upset about something.

"I was going to see if you wanted to trade spots," says Sakura, "but I wasn't sure the safest way to wake you up." Easier to lie with the truth. He doesn't need to know what sort of debased things she was thinking a moment ago. It would lessen the fun whenever they're revealed.

"Mm," hums Sasuke with a nod. "Fair point." The flat between his brows smooths out.

"Your neck must be killing you." Sakura props herself up on one elbow. "I can heal it. If you want." Give me your neck, she means. Her fingers threading around his throat while her teeth find the holes Orochimaru's left behind before shebites down—Sakura shudders. Give me your neck.

"Nothing to heal," he says. "Nothing's broken."

"Doesn't hurt at all?"

Give me your fucking neck.

"No."

"You're sure?"

Sasuke's narrow eye finds her. "Enough, Sakura," he commands. Whether her arousal is brought on by his condescension or his condescension is brought on by her arousal, it's too close a race to tell. The wind beating against the window behind her draws Sakura's eyes to it, grimacing at the wetness between her thighs when she shifts. You blind moron, she refrains from whining.

"How long until the storm passes?"

Sasuke is beside the bed now, Sakura rocking onto her back to stare up at him. "Beats me," he says. "I figured it would've by now." She watches his Adam's apple bob. His skin is lily-white this close to the window, reflective as snow. Sakura sheepishly splays herself and postures her chest out. Glancing down, Sasuke's eye roams the length of her body; ghostly petals sow goosebumps down her side. "It shouldn't last more than a day or two." He bends forward, face passing close to hers. Sakura's breath hitches. He's standing up straight no more than a second later with the bag in hand. The air leaves her lungs in a huff, shock turning her ears hot. Sasuke waits. "Can you move?" he grunts, quickly adding a low, "Please."

Hands beside her head, chest arched up and open, her stomach knotting with arousal—Sakura stares dumbfounded at him. Is he completely inept? Does he really not get it? Did he just say please? Louring, Sakura sits up and rocks off the mattress, heels thudding the floor as she moves to stand behind him. Sasuke drops the bag down where she was just moments before and begins his digging. Completely dismissive. Not even a crumb of acknowledgment. She folds her arms under her breasts. Maybe he didn't bring her for that?

Then what's the fucking point?

"What are you getting?" she grumbles.

"We're stuck here for the time being," says Sasuke, spreading out scrolls over the bedsheets. "I'm going to read." Pausing, he spares her a look over his shoulder. "Is there something you want to pass the time?"

Sakura scrubs a hand under her dry nose and examines the window in thought. "I'll read if you have anything for me."

Sasuke nods and hands her one of the scrolls, not checking which one. She crossly assumes none of them are confidential to whatever it is he does outside of Konoha. They both settle in their respective spots, Sakura perched on the bed with Sasuke against the wall beside her. She can't help her eyes from wandering to the crown of his head every few minutes, watching him slowly unravel his scroll further and further. He looks small when he's on the floor even if his head reaches the top of the mattress. Sakura wastes some time pretending she is a god peering down from above until Sasuke notices her heated stare and requests she stop. Fair enough. Sakura asks the same of them.

She reads because there's nothing else to do. The silence beyond the shivering glass of the window prickles the nerves in her knees and makes her legs burn, eventually rising from the bed to begin pacing around the room, ignoring the way Sasuke watches her beneath the shadow of his brow.

"Antsy?" he asks, scroll settled over his thigh. She nods without meeting his gaze, continuing her rounds. "We could do something," he offers.

She feels her pupils constrict. "Like what?" Her stomach boils over.

Sasuke rewraps his scroll around its umbilicus and leans his head back. "We don't have much room," he begins. Sakura realizes he's mulling something over. "I need to do my stretching. You can join me. If you want."

Not like she wouldn't be joining him anyway. They're no more than ten feet apart at any given point.

"Yeah," agrees Sakura. "I'd like that."

Sasuke rises to his feet and sets his scroll away, right hand fiddling with the buttons of his cloak as he begins taking it off. Sakura's eyes burrow into his back. He halfway undresses without pause, her chest tightening with every frantic beat of her rabbit heart, blood filling her cheeks hot as liquor. She imagines her teeth biting down on his neck and her lower belly gives a giddy kick. When he turns back to her bare-chested, white and purple scars adorning his hard stomach, Sakura feels her face draw wide. The gap of empty space on his left is crowned with a mangled stump. Its beauty is incorporeal and horrendous. Sakura swallows a mouthful of drool.

"You look weird," Sasuke derides. She blinks away the little fish in her eyes with her spine taut as fishing wire. The tension in her guts seeps out with each tap of his feet against the floorboards, Sakura's eyes following him as he comes to a stop in front of her. "Do you want to just follow along?" he asks. "I don't want to teach you."

She grimaces. "Fine?" How endearing.

"I have a routine," says Sasuke. "Because of—" His left shoulder rolls forward.

"Oh. Yeah." Of course. "I understand."

"If you can think of something better, I'll follow."

For a second, she's too flattered to find her voice, drunk on his measly affirmation. "Oh. Uhm—I mean, yes." Sasuke cocks a brow. There's a small smirk tacking up the side of his mouth. "I'll just," Sakura blindly motions at his body, "follow you. For now."

She sounds like she's thirteen and it makes her want to stamp a hole through the floor and then three miles deeper. Her teeth grind and the sound makes her ears itch.

Eye crinkling, Sasuke blows out a snort. "Tell me if you get bored."

Like she'd ever say that when he's bent half-naked in front of her. He must be joking.

The blizzard outside wails on, Sakura's eyes flickering over the fireplace whenever the wind starts getting too loud, nervous the whole thing might come crashing down. Sasuke always says something, or changes positions, or gently reaches out to prod her collar. Tries to guide her back in without having to call out. Sakura answers even if he's silent.

After a while she realizes that her legs are beginning to burn again. Oh, so he was right; this is capable of being boring. Her eyes widen at the sensation of humid chakra licking the soles of her feet, Sasuke's signature flaring out to demand her attention. She obeys without hesitation. Something flitters across his face.

Sasuke suddenly stoops too quickly for her to follow, Sakura's heels drumming down as she catches herself. Behind the curtain of his bangs Sasuke's mouth curls catlike. She blinks. He's continuing his stretching like nothing happened, dutifully holding her gaze. Completing another bend, he spins on the ball of his foot, ending up behind her before Sakura has time to realize what's happening.

"What're you—" The words catch before they pass her lips. A glance over her shoulder reveals Sasuke smirking, then he's flickering away with a chuckle. Playful. Childlike. Something inside her stirs. When Sasuke appears to her left she twirls around him by a hold on his arm, jabbing him between his shoulder blades with two fingers. "Ha," she enunciates with a grin, voice barely edging above a whisper.

Sasuke is behind her, breath hot along the shell of her ear. "Ha," he mocks. Two fingers meet her spine.

Oh.

That's how Naruto did it.

How come she never realized?

Sakura turns her head enough to meet his eye. The storm howls, the window above the bed shaking. Her hand coils back to snag his wrist.

"No cheating," she breathily laughs. Then they're moving again. All over the cabin. Feet landing on the wall, the ceiling, dancing around each other as they scale up the fireplace's sunken face, Sasuke stabbing the space between her shoulder blades again and again and again. Sakura pretends she doesn't think about his hand passing straight through. She jabs him back with muzzled ferocity, chakra fanning out deep and hot. The room is spinning, the floor becoming the wall becoming the ceiling. Sakura sees a barely-withheld grin spread across Sasuke's face on a particularly close orbit. He pops her cheek with a soft palm and earns a giggle. Sakura returns the gesture, watching Sasuke's eye blow wide as he's sent careening right.

She blows a raspberry at the sound of his body hitting dense wood. "Good?"

Sasuke huffs despite the brief, dazzled glint that lights his eye. "Always," he purrs.

Always, her guts echo. No matter what. They're moving again and it's rougher, faster, their strokes choppy and calculated. Sparring with no intent to harm—with only curious, childlike hands and curious, childlike intemperance. Cartwheeling over one another's shoulders to seize an angle, to pretend they are killing, to pretend they aren't just trying to find out where on the body the other responds. Sakura smiles at the sensation of her stomach dropping, hair whipping in and out of her face, falling over him—over and over. A streak of white lightning; Sasuke's long arm coils around her waist and snags her off her feet, pinning her to the wall they're on, bare chest pumping with his lungs.

Leaning close to her face—so close his forehead almost kisses her seal—Sasuke opens his mouth before exhaling, "Ha."

Her arms move before her mind catches on. They're wrapping around his neck. They're drawing him in. Their lips are sliding together.

Sasuke is suddenly on the opposite side of the room with his feet back on the floor and his dark eye homing in on her. Denuded of the layers of clothing shielding his muscles from her eyes, she sees him tensing rhythmically, jaw flexed as if he could chew through his thoughts rather than sort them. If not for her lungs trying to even themselves out, Sakura would scoff. No matter what? she asks in the privacy of her head. They stare at each other; Sakura sitting horizontal off the wall, Sasuke's eye burning a hole through her head from the floor below.

"Don't do that," he commands.

"Why not?"

"Because I said so."

She's in front of him, undoing her shirt and pressing forward. "I told you not to boss me around."

He's backing up.

He's actually backing up.

"Sakura," says Sasuke, showing an open palm, "stop." His sincerity calcifies as a lump of guilt in her stomach, but Sakura forces it back down beneath her depths. Nevertheless, she relents. His eye narrows when she slips off her shirt. "What are you doing?"

"It's only fair. We're sparring now, aren't we?"

Sasuke's mouth smears into a frown. "You'll want a layer between you and me."

Sakura's hands shoot for his chest. There's a loud thud as his back meets the wall behind him.

"Don't treat me like a little girl," she orders—with an anger she didn't know was there but definitely is.

"Fine," concedes Sasuke. Ever the lenient creature these days, ever since Naruto cracked him open and scooped out his insides. Sakura would be jealous if she hadn't benefited so much from it. Why does it make her want to cry? Her anger funnels into a white-clenched fist, Sasuke's eye bursting scarlet before he ducks out of the way. He's faster than her, but she's stronger than him and meaner.

Haruno Sakura, more vicious than Uchiha Sasuke.

She never thought this day would come.

But here it is. And here he is. Right in front of her.

They're moving around the cabin, this time in postured, tense silence, the sound of skin meeting skin the only thing left beneath the roaring blizzard. Sasuke is a blur of milky soot when he dodges, graceful as ever—as always. Sakura finds herself doing most of the chasing—as always—and falls back. When he trades their respective roles without missing a beat, Sakura smirks. She feels their knuckles touch. Behind his bangs, Sasuke's sharingan flares.

You move very differently .

Sakura hears his voice but his lips don't move, stepping over a ceiling beam and blocking a fist aimed for her sternum, snagging it in one hand. His eyes flicker down at her chest for a split second. Sakura wishes she'd remembered to unwrap beforehand, but it's not too late. She can now. Dropping from the roof, she hits the floor and begins fiddling with the gauze's hook at her back.

"Hold," murmurs Sakura. Sasuke's feet slam down in front of her.

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm chafing."

"No you're not."

Sakura shoots a glare up at him, already beginning to unwrap. You going to stop me? It looks as if he has something he wants to spit, but is refraining, mouth twitching at the rims around a thick swallow.

"Fine," he concedes.

Sakura grins. Good boy.

His reaction times are even more precise now, slinking away from her like water in oil, avoiding her touch as if her skin might burn him. Sucking in a tight breath, she relishes the look of surprise that stretches his face wide beneath the shield of his Susano, her fist stopped before colliding with his temple.

Don't call me that.

Sakura blinks. Is he speaking? Three knuckles scrape the shelf beneath her floating rib, briefly catching and causing her to fold and hiss.

"Yes."

His voice overhead is daybreak, warm breath blowing down the sweating bridge of her spine, Sakura taking in a choked-off lungful when a hand clamps around her throat and yanks her up straight. She fumbles under Sasuke's whirling eyes. Before she can ask, his fingers clamp down harder. Choking, voice hoisted high with tension, Sakura squeezes her eyes shut and staves off the fit of elated laughter brewing in her chest. Hurt me.

Despite forcing her to her tiptoes, she barely feels his exhales ghosting out overhead. "You aren't fighting like a kunoichi." Both hands wrapped around his wrist, basking in the fantasy of submission, Sakura swallows and opens her eyes. Sasuke is studying her like a poised leopard. "You fight like Kabuto."

Her stomach caves. Sakura doesn't think; the spit leaves her mouth like venom.

A low boom punches through her insides, the sound leaving Sakura stunned. Sasuke's mouth is against hers with his tongue lolling out. Wet heat hits her bottom. Sakura tastes her own spit in his mouth.

"Like an animal," he breathes into her. His hand around her neck has gone slack. She doesn't free herself.

"Do you like it?" whispers Sakura.

Sasuke's sharingan flickers behind his bangs, black tomoes flexing.

His mouth crashes down and his teeth find the plush of her lower lip, Sakura's hand fisting into the back of his hair to lock him in place. Bite me. Wind whips the shells of her ears before her back hits the floor. His tongue tastes like ash, wet stripes burning up the valley of her breasts, her thighs parting pale rivers around his waist. Good boy. Every cell in her body is shaking like tinfoil on a tooth. Her hips drive upward as his grind down, shuddering at the feeling of his clothed erection pressing against her clit. Sakura's left hand finds the side of his face and drags across a high cheek, fingers clenching into his dusky mane. Eat me. She moans into his mouth and the vibration itches her lips, soothed by the love bites Sasuke litters over them.

Breaking away, gulping down air, Sakura gasps out, "Take them off," with a punishing yank on his hair. Growling, teeth clicking as his jaw cinches, Sasuke tears back and begins messily unbuttoning his pants. Sakura doesn't hesitate to help, ripping at him with unbridled fervor. Above the sound of her heavy breathing, Sakura hears Sasuke chuckle.

"You're so impatient," he hisses, words sewn into her hairline.

"You're so slow," she hisses back. There's the sound of a zipper and thick heat falls into her open palm. Sakura's lungs deflate with a shuddering exhale. She gently grips him. He's bigger than she expected. She doesn't have to look to know; her fingers just barely wrap around. A throaty growl escapes Sasuke as he grinds into the touch. Her vision temporarily floods with scar tissue, letting her head fall to the side and admire the mutilated stump that was once an arm—once an arm with a hand with a chidori in its palm, burrowed into her sternum, gripping around her still-beating heart. Her breath stutters, phantom pain soaking the space between her thighs. She traces up the underside of his cock so softly she barely realizes it. Kill me. His abdomen clenches before Sasuke pins her down, bowing over her with his teeth at her throat. Sakura blinks when his body veers left, catching himself before hitting the floor.

"Switch places," she orders breathlessly.

Departing from her neck, Sasuke sends her a confused look. "What?"

She rolls her eyes. Taking both of his shoulders, chakra bursting through the tendons in her thighs, Sakura rocks them forward before slamming him down on his back. Dragging herself over the flat expanse of his abdomen, she smirks and touches foreheads.

"There," she whispers. "Better?" A choked gasp flees her when Sasuke fists into the back of her hair, forcing Sakura to arch backwards like a bow.

"You talk too much." His tongue drags along the curve of her throat before teeth nip at her chin. Thighs clenching, the only thing Sakura manages is a high-pitched whimper. How long has it been since then? It feels as if she's burning from the inside out. "Look at you," Sasuke groans huskily, "purring like a slut." Lips dip beneath her jawline. "You've been after my cock this whole time? You're soaking wet."

"You haven't even checked," whines Sakura, gritting her teeth and giggling when he yanks her head further back. She bounces off a jerk from his hips. White bleaches the rims of her vision and she loses her stomach.

"Don't have to. I can feel it."

Sakura rubs herself over the smooth ridge of his cock, feeling him loosen his grip enough for her to slide lower, then suddenly she's slapped across the face. Her cry comes out pathetically wanton. Fingers snag hold of her jaw and force her eyes back to his, Sakura's lips gently pursed from her pinched cheeks.

"Shit," he laughs—genuinely laughs. "You're precious. All you had to do was ask, Sakura."

She's falling all over again, her guts drifting snug against her spine, Sasuke's dark eyes lost to a flurry of bubbles and blackness. She doesn't even realize his fingers are creeping past her waistband until a callous palm grabs a fistful of her ass.

"Are you serious?" whispers Sakura.

Sasuke kisses her seal with his forehead, dark lashes framing mismatched eyes. "I've wanted to fuck you since we left Lightning." His chuckle tickles her upper lip. "Don't tell me you didn't notice."

Best not bring it up. Best focus on the goal now within arm's reach—snug between her thighs.

Batting her eyes, reminding him of her plight with a stern dip of her pelvis, Sakura mouths against his ear, "Then what's stopping you?" She's beneath him on her back in mere seconds, Sasuke stripping her bare before shrugging his pants off. So mighty is he that he can't deny her, Sakura privately gloats. She imagines she could make him do anything, given the right amount of time. He melts against her front with a languid stroke of her hand, eclipsing her mouth with his own and sucking the air from her lungs.

Sakura looks down between her thighs and shudders. The glistening head of his cock prods her.

"You really want this?" Sasuke whispers in a tight voice, right hand drawing his bangs back behind his ear. The rinnegan bellows when she finds it, twirling a languid spiral around his dilated pupil, humming beneath its mauve surface. "I won't be able to stop," he warns. Sakura can't contain her heaving breaths, enthralled by the prospect of returning to the battlefield—of war. Her stomach caves beneath the shelf of her ribs and she nods, lurching up with her jaws cracked open.

"Please," Sakura mewls against his salty throat, drags her lips before raking red lines with her teeth. Sasuke's eyes narrow a fraction, then he relents:

A breathing spiral of dead stardust enveloping her naked body, wrapping her in broiling, gaseous heat so smoldering her chest sweats. The rinnegan sirens out into the nothingness of cold space; a beacon to which her consciousness tethers. There's a silent eruption from its center, a volcanic plume of shimmering plasma floating upward like milk in water, flooding the emptiness with viscous clouds of gore-tinged dust. The pressure shifts and she's thrown, then Sakura's spine is pressed flat against wet, packed dirt—hot as spill from a corpse. She's back on earth with space high above, the blinking stars in the tapestry of night sky bleeding out of existence as an explosion of light blinds her. A shockwave hits them from the left and Sakura's hands instinctively cover her head, a shrill warble slipping past her lips. Sasuke says nothing. She can't even tell where he is. There's a swelling noise between her ears. Behind the cage of her arms Sakura looks out over a field of bodies. The bleak escarpment they're on is a slab of corpse-riddled rock. Another eruption lights up the sky and a blast of heat blows her hair back.

Air escapes her lungs in a single, shuddering exhale. She reaches out and feels the drag of water against her skin—feels the scorch of war rubbing her flesh ruddy.

She sees him.

Sasuke is a black absence between her open thighs, the glow of his eyes the only thing identifying him apart from the crude cut of his mane, pulsing out electrified vibrations in place of a chakra signature. His hands are around her throat suddenly, thumbs pressed up into her trachea hard enough to flatten her tongue against the back of her esophagus. He speaks and his voice suffuses blistering static. It echoes indiscernible around the inside of her skull and beats the backs of her eyes bloody. Sakura squeaks on a stifled inhale. Her guts shiver and beg her to curl in on herself, but Sasuke is fast to force her wrists above her head, unfurling her body to his lecherous gaze. He speaks again and the sound is like nothing she's ever heard, horrifying and inhuman and far away—calling out from some distant pocket of time wherein she does not yet exist.

Firm heat presses into her and scorches the inner ribbings of her body, Sakura's head falling to the side as he carves a ruthless path in, writhing around his stretch. She opens her burning eyes with a half-bitten purr. A butchered shinobi stares back. The shriek clawing its way up her throat hits a deafening octave. Sasuke recoils, voice ripping the air, his face nothing but black emptiness to fall into. The pitch tears downward as knuckles meet her right cheek. Sakura tastes blood and tears and bile.

His fist pounds the floor to the left of her head.

"Sasuke," she sobs. His hands clamp down hard enough to cut off her airway and force her silent, Sasuke brutally fucking into her willing body. Tears run down her temples into her hairline. She gapes around a mute scream.

He bows over her shivering frame, kisses the side of her face, rubbing up and down the swell of her hip.

Sakura jolts across the hot dirt each time his flat hips piston, one hand unwinding from her throat to take a brutal fistful of her right breast, the left bouncing with the force of his thrusts. He's rough and merciless and feral, biting into the meat of her chest before clamping down on a pert nipple. Sakura's back arches with a howl, the angle allowing him to plunge deeper, both hands gripping the plush of her underthighs and hauling her hips further up. She gulps down enough air to scream, writhing against the blood-slick dirt.

He cups her cheek and kisses her forehead.

The stench of rot and rust catches in the pumpkin guts of her lungs, both of which deflate with a staggered gasp at the sound of screeches. Her eardrums burst. Sasuke's silhouette rises, a chidori bursting his left hand. A ring of dust blows back as the rinnegan bellows. Sasuke stabs five fingers through her sternum and grabs hold of her spine. Her heart jumps into her throat to choke her.

He draws his tongue down her chest in a trail of wet stripes, rocking into her body with moth-soft murmurs.

Her left lung pops as the electricity seizes her muscles, bloody mucus clogging her throat, Sakura's eyes spilling over. She lies pliant beneath him, their bodies connected at two points, Sasuke's hips slamming into her the tighter he grips her spine. All she can do is wheeze and sob and stare at the body beside her, the burnt-white veins stemming out from a hole in his chest. Chakra network charred. Sakura feels her own frying the longer Sasuke's chidori lights up her nervous system.

She's weeping.

She can't breathe.

She's so scared.

"Breathe," he sighs into her gaping mouth.

Sakura suddenly has two lungs again. "Fuck!" she shrieks and tosses her head back. The sound of slapping skin makes her ears ring. "Fuck!" She wants to die. She wants him to kill her. He's going to kill her. Don't stop.

"I might love you," whispers Sasuke.

His hands slip beneath her ass and grab hold, dragging her up off the ground and heaving her against his front. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, Sakura digs her nails into his back, gasping as his cock slips in to the hilt. She clutches him for dear life. There are bodies everywhere. People she can't save. Couldn't save. They're all gone.

"Sasuke!" Her voice sounds like a wounded animal; a cat screeching in a bear trap. "Sasuke!" Kill me.

He cages her against the ceiling, thrusts bouncing her body against him, hand tracing the canyon of her spine down to her tailbone.

Another shockwave has her gripping him tighter, both legs knotted around his waist. Heat envelops her back as Sasuke's katon roars to life. The bodies alight. Sakura screams.

Her nipple is hard beneath his palm, his head turned away to relight the fire.

"Stop!" she pleads, reaching out. Neji's hollow eyes stare at her from the corpse pyre. "Stop! "

He grabs her wrist before she reaches into the fireplace.

t h e s h e d o u t b a c k i s o n f i r e , y o u k n o w ?

He's fucking her so hard she can't find her voice, both hands on his shoulders while she leans back into the cocoon of his arms. His eyes are bright nebulas behind the blackness of his bangs, burrowing into her—spearing straight through her forehead into the meat of her brain. Kill me. Sakura arches with a bestial moan, the bend of her body encouraging him further. His hold turns bruising. He batters her guts so ruthlessly she feels him against the bottom of her stomach. Just fucking kill me.

She parts her legs wider.

There's nothing but empty carcass to fuck into, cleaved throat to cunt, the underside of his cock running along the knobs of her inner spine.

Her quaking breaths weave thunder between his ribs, Sasuke watching her tear-streaked face warp with pleasure, thumb running over her full, bottom lip.

She's coming undone at the seams.

She's screaming so hard she chokes on the inside of her throat.

"Cum for me, sweetheart."

She's digging her teeth into the junction of his neck and shoulder, spitting out a scream, knees shaking as they grapple his ribcage. She convulses. Her orgasm tears through her and leaves her body a gaping gulch of meat and bones and sinew.

Her bite draws a surprised gasp from his chest, honey-like heat flooding his stomach.

The sound of his cock driving into her goes wet, drooling between her thighs, Sasuke's voice shattering the air like frozen glass.

She's floating through cold, vacuous space, then her back hits the cabin floor and Sasuke is no longer a black hole above her. The fire crackles to her right and Sakura's head darts toward it, throat ousting a thick sob.

"No!" she shrieks. Sasuke's hand finds the side of her face and guides her eyes back to him.

"Calm down," he whispers against her quivering lips, mouth dry from panting. "It's over." She can't stop her body from shaking, the tail end of her orgasm fraying her nerves to the quick. Everything is too much. She can't breathe—

Someone wraps their arms around her and draws her close; a cradle of familiar warmth to fade into.

"Let go."

It's all he has to say.


"They were killing things in there."

The low hum of his voice brings Sakura's green eyes to him, her seeing the way his posture has stiffened. He's a looming mountain at her side, dark frame stark against a sea of soundless white.

"What?" she asks, confused. Sasuke rolls his left shoulder and his cloak parts an inch, Sakura's gaze sneaking down before returning to his face. He's fidgeting, oddly enough. "Killing things where?"

"In the shed." His mouth is pressed thin. He's staring at something only he sees. "The thing you were asking about the other night. The shed that burnt down. I burnt down." Sakura is quiet as he speaks, curiosity bared. The snow-covered field and the forest beyond are listening intently alongside her. The world is silent in the wake of his voice, enraptured by his reveal. Sasuke sighs through his nose and shifts his weight between his legs. There are flurries dusting his stricken face made cruel in the biting wind.

"Is that why?" softly asks Sakura. His gaze finds her, lone eye black as the space between stars. Wordlessly he nods, but Sakura hears it: shame. Her stomach drops. "Killing what?" She tries to hide how her flesh prickles at the mere word. The feeling in her belly worsens.

Sasuke looks back out into the empty nothingness. "Things." The forest breathes with wind at their backs stolen from her own lungs. "Animals." Wind chimes tinkle, his hand balling into a whitening fist. Her stomach rolls. "People."

Sakura blinks away the white fish swimming in her vision. Both thrill and disgust churn her guts cold, a thread of remorse weaving its way into the grooves of her molars. She's being torn in two directions with a third on the horizon.

"Did you kill them?"

The question earns a calculating stare from Sasuke, his expression that of a death mask. "Which ones?" he asks.

The way he says it is enough.

Sakura averts her eyes and looks out across the mountain range, hoping her mind will wander away from her—from this. She forgot how brutal a wound guilt tears.

"Oh." It's the only thing she can think of saying. Sasuke hangs beside her but remains silent. "Why?" It doesn't make any sense. He sends her a pointed look. "Why choose here?"

His shoulders eventually lower, bangs blown back to unveil hollow, vacant eyes. "To rid myself of the rest." It sounds as uncertain as he looks. "Burn it all to the ground."

For a moment, Sakura simply cradles the fragile confession. Holds it in her hands and feels its weight. It isn't often he brings her offerings. She cherishes the enveloping silence.

"Then what's stopping you?"

Sasuke chuckles, of all things. Glancing over, Sakura's met with a familiar smirk.

"Nothing anymore, I suppose," he purposefully sighs. It takes two heartbeats for her to blush.

"Oh," chirps Sakura. "I—" That wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. Before her thoughts can spiral, a warm hand slides over her cheekbone and crests into her hair, combing her bangs back. Sasuke's transfixed stare burns her face molten, spine pulling out like a bow when his lips place a chaste kiss over her seal.

"You should show your forehead more often, Sakura."