Her pink hair flew in the wind, and warm tears stained her cheeks. "I'll even help you with your revenge! There must be something that I can do. That's why… please, stay here… with me." He still stood with his back to her, motionless. No response. Her final option left… "Or if that's not possible… please… take me with you." The words echoed in her ears as she said them, realizing what they meant. To abandon her life as a ninja… to abandon everyone… all for a boy who she loved but did not love her back.
He turned back to her slowly his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You mean that?"
She nodded her head fervently, realizing that she was getting through to him. She would save him… save him from himself. "Yes, Sasuke-kun. I don't have any of my things packed but…"
She heard a whooshing noise, and to her eyes he disappeared. He could move as fast as Lee-kun for short bursts, she knew. His breath fell lightly on the nape of her neck, standing a few inches behind her. She choked back a gasp, standing paralyzed. "Sakura…" His voice trailed off, and the hesitation in his voice was the longest wait she had ever experienced. "Thank you." With that simple enunciation, he softly struck a pressure point in her back with his thumb. She felt her legs go weak and the world grow dark as he caught her falling body in his arms.
-----
She woke slowly. The soil beneath her was soft, and not terribly uncomfortable, but it was definitely not her own bed. And the tree canopy above her, with waning sunlight glinting through gaps in the foliage cover, was definitely not the ceiling in her bedroom. Dare she hope? She looked around her with bated breath. Sasuke's face, complete with an angelic serenity found only in deep slumber replacing his usual sneers, lay in the dirt next to hers. His breath fell slowly and regularly, his face was smudged with mud. She sat up, feeling dizzy, and looked him over for wounds. Nothing obvious, though his clothes were torn in a few places and looked like they had been soaked with sweat. She lay on her back quietly, thinking. He must have carried her as he fled the village, traveling quickly by tree branches. She didn't recognize where they were, but it was nearly dusk judging by the sun, and Sasuke could travel fast even carrying her. So they could be nearly anywhere…
She felt a lump in her throat form. She had left home, without saying goodbye to Naruto, any of her friends, her sensei, her parents. They were officially enlisted genin, bound to the Hokage and Konoha Village, required to take and complete missions. By leaving without permission, they were branded Missing Nin… traitors. She forced down her terror… the rational part of her mind going over the last reports she had read about Konoha's forces. They were spread so thin that teams of genin were being assigned to difficult missions. Would Tsunade-sama have ninja to spare to send out after them? In her heart, she knew the answer. No one knew if they had been kidnapped, or left on their own accord. Konoha never abandon them or forget about their disappearance. Hunter Nin would be dispatched to track down the pair of them… and Sasuke would fight them until the end.
She mumbled to herself quietly. "If I think too much now, I'm going to have to decide if this was a wonderful decision or the most monumental mistake of my life. I don't think I'm ready to face that answer just yet." The pink haired kunoichi drew in a deep breath, trying to distract herself. Nearly three quarters of a day had passed, she reasoned, and for a good portion of that Sasuke had been running at high speed bearing her weight. He would probably be very hungry when he woke, and she wanted to make him breakfast. She had no supplies of her own, but it was time to find out what Sasuke had brought in his pack. She shuffled through it tenderly… mostly extra kunai and shuriken on the top. She found the flint and tinder, started a fire with practiced ease, then pulled out the single amenity for cooking Sasuke had deemed fit to pack: a small pan.
Examining her surroundings closely, she studied the nearly invisible wire traps Sasuke had put up before passing out. She bypassed them carefully and hunted around, managing to find enough eggs to make a decent meal for the two of them. As she returned, she noted the sun's level. "Only an hour of daylight left…" She began cooking the eggs with a small sigh. "I should probably get some meat… but I'm terrible at hunting." As the eggs cooked, she shuffled through the pack to look for spices. Not finding any and quickly becoming frustrated, she dug to the bottom before her fingers hit an old scroll, as wide as the width of the pack and taking up nearly the bottom quarter of the pack. Her pondering came to a halt as small noises emanating from Sasuke reached her ears. Her attention snapped over to him and she crawled near him. His breath was labored, his expression morphing between terror and anger. Her expression creased in worry, trying to find a way to comfort him. "Sa… Sasuke-kun." She gently took ahold of his shoulder and tried to hug him.
In a flash, he struck her hard in the chest, knocking her back and nearly onto the makeshift fire pit. He landed crouched over her, his black kunai gleaming in his grasp, screaming down for blood. It halted a razor's width away from her neck, his expression, a twisted visage of hatred, looming over her. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest, and two long breaths went by before Sasuke's expression broke into his normal demeanor when he was with her… a sort of patronizing disgruntlement. She loathed that face. Inner Sakura called to her from deep inside her mind, screaming for her to retaliate, but she pushed the voice away. He glanced off to the side, quickly slipping his kunai back into his satchel and rolling off her body. "Sorry."
'He doesn't sound very sorry.' Inner Sakura sulked. Sakura threw up her cheerful façade, though it was strained. "No, it was my fault, Sasuke-kun. I shouldn't have startled you like that." She realized how dangerously close that had been. Even if Sasuke's kunai hadn't halted, her body had landed a breadth away from the fire. She sat up, rubbing the spot on her neck where the blade would have fallen if the blow had followed through. "You were dreaming…"
He twisted and looked at her angrily. "I was not."
She looked abashedly at the eggs as they hissed and popped. "Oh." There was a long awkward silence. "Well… I made us breakfast… dinner?"
He shuffled over to the pan, scraping half of the steaming eggs out into the only plate he had packed. He handed it to her wordlessly along with his pair of chopsticks. Brooding, he scooped the rest out of the pan with his fingers and ate. "So I bet you think its pretty funny, don't ya?"
She looked up at him with saddened eyes. "I don't understand."
His eyebrows furrowed. "Don't you think its funny that I still have nightmares about him?" She looks at him wordlessly in shock, her eggs untouched. He ate the meager meal with a ferocity, his eyes gleaming with anger. "If you tell anyone what you saw…"
Sakura's eyes shone with anger of their own. "I wouldn't do that to you, Sasuke-kun. I'm here to help you."
He kicked at the dirt absently. "My life is killing Itachi. It's not your cause to take up."
She bit her lip, her expression determined. "That's my decision to make, Sasuke-kun… not yours. I'll make my own paths."
His eyes darkened. "And you honestly think you can help? To succeed where I've failed? You're not in the same league as me or Itachi, not by a long shot."
His wounds cut deeply into her, but a flash of anger replaced the hurt just as quick as it came. "If you thought that low of me, why did you bring me in the first place?" She instantly regretted the angry tone in her voice. The emotional strain had shortened her already short temper… the aspect of herself that she normally kept buried deep inside herself around Sasuke.
He looked at her measuringly, her reaction uncharacteristically resolute. "Why… why did I bring you?" He looked troubled. The question wasn't rhetorical, and it wasn't directed at her. He sounded as though he really didn't know himself.
Sakura's breath caught in her chest. "Loneliness."
His head snapped up again, but this time without the anger. "Loneliness?"
She looked at the empty pan he was using as a plate, and scooped a portion of hers into the pan for him. She took a bite of her egg and chewed as she considered how to phrase what she wanted to say. "I won't pretend I understand what you feel. But I know that you're going to need someone there for you while you do this."
"I can't afford to have friends, Sakura. Even the danger aside… I need to be ready to throw my life away at a moment's notice if I see a chance to kill my brother. How can…" He trailed off for a moment, looking up into the sunlight cutting through the tree cover. "If I let someone in… let myself really start caring about someone… I might hesitate when my chance comes." She watched his expression, staying quiet. He scowled for a moment, then offered her a wry grin. "Why? Why after everything… everything that I've done to drive you away… why are you still so nice to me?"
She considered him carefully. "Because you… more than anyone else… need a friend." She finished her meal with a kind smile, setting down the plate on their canvas pack, and moved to sit beside Sasuke. She gently wrapped her arms around one of his, snuggling against his shoulder.
He shifted uncomfortably before leaning into her embrace a small bit. "I told you… I don't need anyone."
"Maybe not…" came her distant reply as she watched the fire dance and snap in the evening light. "But now you have someone."
-----
Naruto bounded over to Sakura's residence early in the morning, a lighthearted feeling in him. 'Last night I went on a date with Sakura-chan!' he thought while beaming ecstatically. True… it had gone different than he had thought dates usually went. In fact, it was pretty close to his usual routine of eating ramen, only with a girl next to him. But she said it was a date before they left, and that meant it was. 'A date with Sakura-chan!' he bubbled before finding himself in front of her family's apartment.
Two knocks later, he found himself facing the sleep-deprived face of Sakura's mother.
"Naruto-kun…" she said quickly, her eyes filled with worry. "You were with Sakura last night weren't you?"
"Oh hello Mrs. Haruno." He bowed awkwardly. "Yeah… I just came over to see if she was available this morning."
"She never came back home last night. I think I'm going to notify the Anbu… this just isn't like her."
He felt his happiness evaporate, filled with a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. He had offered to walk her home… but she had talked him out of it. Somehow… somehow he just knew Sasuke was responsible. 'What did that bastard do to her?' He turned and ran, ignoring the cries of Sakura's mother from behind him.
-----
Sasuke's apartment was utterly demolished. Naruto walked around the room cautiously, broken glass crunching underfoot. His first thoughts were that a fight had been fought in the room, but that theory quickly fell apart. There were no discarded weapons, no evidence of any jutsu being used, and no blood anywhere. The more Naruto thought about it, the more it seemed like the damage was inflicted by Sasuke ripping his room apart in anger. He sat down on the bed, his head pounding with knowledge of what this all might mean. He picked up a damaged picture frame which lay resting on the toppled dresser, examining its contents. The picture was of team seven, the same one that rested on his own nightstand. Kakashi smiled as best he could through his mask, Sakura had her hands clasped together and knelt in the front. Sasuke was busy looking angrily at the camera. All that remained of where he knew his own face should be in the picture was a large hole made by a kunai… as if someone had stabbed the picture straight through his face and obliterated him. The hand that held the picture frame trembled with anger. Naruto's voice, an unusual a deep rumble, growled through the room.
"Sasuke… I'll tear you apart."
-----
Sakura flew through the forest with practiced ease, landing on branches for the barest of moments before launching herself into open air again. The sun was rising over the horizon in front of her, which meant they had been traveling for half a day. Her legs burned from exertion, though she knew that Sasuke was keeping an easy pace for her. They would travel east, they decided, towards Water Country. Sasuke told her of a Missing Nin from Water Country who traveled with his brother… a strange man with bluish skin. It was their only lead. They hadn't spoken it aloud, but they both knew that the route also took them nearly directly away from Hidden Sound Village, where Orochimaru was based.
As they had sat next to the cooking fire in awkward physical contact with each other, Sasuke had explained their strategy to her. She was one of the most talented ninjas in the village for detecting chakra, so she would travel behind him masking her presence, and watch for enemies. Hopefully pursuers would detect only him, and she would be able to alert him as they approached. He was putting a lot of trust in her, and she was determined to show him she was deserving.
She was probing the woods for enemies when she felt a blast of chakra ahead of her, strong enough to make her see only white for a moment. She could feel him ahead of her, falling… plummeting through the trees, towards the ground. Acting without thinking, she launched herself downward in a streak, closing the distance between herself and Sasuke, scooping him up as they fell. He was screaming in agony, clawing at his neck. The curse seal on his neck was blazing a searing crimson, crawling across his skin. She didn't have time to make a proper landing, so she rolled while clutching his body to her chest, taking the brunt of the blow to her shoulders and back. As they settled in the leaf-strewn ground, he shook free of her grasp, kneeling with his eyes wide with panic.
"Kakashi's seal…" was all he managed to choke out before another wave of pain ripped through him, doubling him over.
Her mind reeled as she stood frozen. Once again, the responsibility fell to her, and she wasn't able to do anything. She could only watch as Sasuke was in need of her help… and she… she couldn't think. Inner Sakura screamed at her, a scream so deafening it knocked her out of her transfixed inaction. Running to him, she acted without clear thought, her fingers passed through the intricate patterns a sealing jutsu. She grabbed the fabric of his shirt, ripping it halfway down the back, yanking down off his shoulder. She bit her thumb with a wince, using her blood to trace flowing characters, extending from the seal in four directions. He thrashed underneath her, still yelling, and she used her knees to pin him, distantly hearing herself swearing like Inner Sakura normally did inside her mind. Her face was a snarl of frustration and concentration, and she savagely bit her other thumb as her first one stopped bleeding profusely enough to write with. The characters, dredged from a far off memory, extended from the curse to point to his four limbs. With a final shout, she thrust her palm against the seal… and hoped.
-----
Sakura held her fellow Missing Nin in her arms, rocking him back and forth as she softly sang songs and fought back tears. A good quarter of his shirt was missing, torn from the neckline down to below the arm, ripped off while she performed her emergency jutsu. The exposed skin gave clear view of her crude jutsu, which had slowly come into existence as a black circle around the curse seal. Sasuke's face had recently lost the frightening pallor which she had noticed after the sealing, and his skin now had a healthy, pink coloring. She could feel him stirring, and she tensed as his eyes opened. After all… her last experience with him waking up to her being in close proximity hadn't gone well.
He hesitated as he took in his surroundings, and the feelings in his body. "You… you managed to contain the curse?" His voice was raspy, but she could hear faint traces of surprise and admiration too.
She averted her eyes with a blush. "Well… yeah. Not very well but… I read a book on it once."
He rubbed the curse tenderly. "It feels… caged. Barely." He hesitated, realizing perhaps for the first time that her arms were draped around his shoulders. "Um… I'm okay now."
'Is he asking me to let go? Probably…' She started to withdraw her hands, but then decided against it and let them rest where they were. She nuzzled against his exposed shoulder gently, a faint smile on her face. "I'm glad you're okay."
His hesitated, uncertainty in his voice and demeanor. "Thank you." The closeness unsettled him greatly. His body was tense, as if he wanted to leap away from her and out of her grasp, but he took a deep breath and laid still. "No one detected chakra burst from the seal being unleashed?"
"If they did, they didn't come to investigate. You've been unconscious for nearly a half hour."
"Idiot… what if someone attacked?" His voice had regained its normal lazy arrogant quality, and there was no heat behind the insult.
She tilted her head up, eyes squinting into the rising sun shining through the trees, to grin at him. "Then I would have beat them up."
He snorted. "You've changed."
She lay quiet for a moment, digesting his comment. "In a good way?"
He shrugged, not deigning to respond to her question. "Why did Kakashi's jutsu fail? We traveled too far away from him?"
She nodded, then her eyes fell. "Either that or… maybe Kakashi-sensei intentionally released it."
Sasuke's eyes hardened with cold anger. "Maybe we really are on our own."
Sakura watched him seethe, his mind pouring over the possibilities. Perhaps their sensei really had intentionally released his jutsu containing the curse seal… but more important than that, Sasuke's anger as he dwelt on the issue was already weakening her work. If she didn't distract him from his negative thoughts, the tentative jutsu she had worked would be unraveled. She sucked in a breath to steady herself, then pulled her face up to his level and placed her lips on his, kissing him gently. She wasn't sure what reaction she anticipated, but she knew she had to try.
Sasuke's body went rigid, every muscle went taut, and his lips were pressed shut in a thin line. Feeling his discomfort, she pulled back and cast her eyes to the side. 'Eh… Not exactly a wonderful first kiss…' She ignored Inner Sakura's wild cheering, and silently chided herself. 'It was his first too… not counting Naruto's accidental one during the final exam of the academy. This isn't going to be easy on either of us.'
Sasuke's mind had gone blank during the kiss, but now worked rapidly in the aftermath. It wasn't any sort of newfound realization that Sakura had romantic feelings for him… half the girls in Konoha did. But it had always been a distant knowledge... something always taken for granted. Now the issue was being pushed to the front of his mind, and he didn't like the feelings it invoked.
He knew what his reaction was supposed to be. His reflex reaction was to do something cruel, to ward her off. His whole life, he had ensured to react swiftly and harshly to any signs of affection from girls… there was no room in his life for romance. 'My life is revenge. That's all there is for me.' He had said it to himself a thousand times… it was his mantra. And it was true… to an extent. Caring for someone… taking revenge on his brother… they were mutually exclusive, weren't they?
His whole life, he had entertained fantasies of how things would play out. His brother, beaten and bloody, yielding before him. His own Sharingan blazing in the darkness, as his brother's eyes dimming, never to see again. But that wasn't how it had happened at all. The gap in power between his brother and himself hadn't narrowed at all since the day of the massacre of his family, and when they fought, he had ended up in the hospital, after landing nary single blow upon his anathema. He had succeeded in focusing all of his being into a single goal, of shutting out everything else that made life worth living, and yet it had gotten him nowhere. Doubts clawed at him.
He looked down, only able to see one half of her face. While he was mulling over his thoughts, Sakura had taken his lack of reaction as rejection. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but the golden daybreak shone across the pink locks of hair that spilled over her face, creating delicate shadows on her blushing cheeks. He felt… guilty… a very foreign feeling. He closed his own eyes as well, his vision swimming. This worry that gnawed inside him, the realization that he was important enough to someone to inspire a genuine reaction like that… it scared him.
He drew her face towards his, kissing her in return. He couldn't say why, exactly… it was part a need to apologize for his cold reaction, part because the grudging acknowledgment of life outside revenge had sparked a morbid sort of curiosity in him. What would it be like to actually care about someone other than himself? He couldn't help but wonder.
Sakura's eyes shot wide, then closed again as she returned his kiss softly. They lay pressed together for a time, kissing experimentally and learning from each one. The kisses were slow and unhurried, but Sakura was still short of breath when Sasuke broke it off to talk for a moment.
"Sakura… I can't promise you much…"
Her lips curled up with a content smile. "I know you can't. Just promise me that you'll try. That you'll see if there's room in your life for me."
He nodded slowly. "I guess… I guess we'll see." His fingers brushed an errant lock of her hair behind her ear.
She felt a thrill run through her, an exultation of victory. She drew his body in close, kissing him fiercely, feeling him hesitantly return the emotion. Sakura's boldness rose with each passing moment, cradling his head with her one hand while the other interlaced fingers with his free hand.
How long they lay together kissing, Sakura couldn't say. She would have been content to lie with him in their bed of leaves… letting her imagination run wild over what might happen if they continued. Her blush intensified, though she doubted Sasuke could tell. Their tongues' danced, the pair quickly adapting to the newness of the experiences. She was pushing her luck, since change did not come quickly to her fellow runaway. He was pulling away now, she knew. She had achieved more today than she had ever allowed herself to hope or dream for, though, and she didn't want to push him. Sakura sighed regretfully, disentangling herself from him, and they rose.
"We should get going." His voice was its usual curt tones, but there was a softness to his voice that she hadn't ever heard before.
Sasuke looked uncomfortable as he glanced at her sidelong, an expression Sakura found bizarre on his face. He wasn't exactly a man of many emotions… usually limited to arrogantly haughty or stoic, with brief bursts of anger. She cast her gaze to the ground, smiling at him. "Of course… you're right."
With her quiet ascension, he tore of at his normal breakneck speed. She launched herself into the trees with a kick from her legs, her heart rejoicing, her mind calculating, and Inner Sakura having a temper tantrum that she had let him out of her grasp.
"One step at a time…" she whispered.