san.
REVENGE WAS NOT for Sakura Haruno, she found out, after maybe an hour or so of following Neji's admittedly sloppy trail through the thinning underbrush and heavy trees of Konoha and into the broad, watery expanse leading to the edges of Amegakure. The ground was perpetually covered in a layer of water, perhaps due to extensive rain, and life had begun to take to it, tadpoles creeping along in deeper pools and Kingfishers swooping down to collect the small fish trapped along with said tadpoles. Sakura had eaten one of those fish when she was forced to stop under rainfall, so hard that it was difficult to see in front of her face—it had tasted far too much like iron, had enough bones that she was constantly picking them from her teeth, and was mostly unfilling as dinner. While a psychotic break was the easiest explanation for the deep desire for revenge, Sasuke coming to the forefront of her mind for that one, it was also the least likely; because for once in her entire life, Sakura found herself unwilling to care.
The moment it had started raining, the warm, humid air coiling around her and setting deep into her bones, she realized, very belatedly, what a stupid idea it was to go after Neji. He had already 'completed' his mission to have her killed and left, not waiting around to see the aftermath. She didn't care that he was just following orders, just like she didn't care that her entire life was lost to her—well, maybe, she did, just a little bit, Kakashi's earnest eyes flashing through her mind. He had been, in the end, the only person to truly care about her up until she had left, a direct switch from her genin days that she appreciated. Now he was stuck in a village he knew would turn on him given the chance, all of his students either filled with revenge, hell-bent on an impossible retrieval mission, and living in exile for a war that would be her end. It was a little poetic, really, but Sakura didn't have a taste—or mind—for poetry.
Stretching out under the canopy of the most decent looking tree she could find, Sakura reached under her mask and rubbed her eyes tiredly. They burned and stung from holding back tears. She would have cried the entire way to Ame if she had let herself, until her tear ducts didn't work anymore and her nausea threatened to consume her. Ino had always called her 'crybaby Sakura' when she got like this, and it was an apt description, she supposed. She pushed her mask up to free her face from the stifling air coming from her mouth and squinted, peering up at the rapidly darkening sky. The rain had yet to let up—
A rustle. Faint, nearly smothered by the rain, and Sakura had barely caught it in time before she was being tackled off the branch she was laying on. Her hands met nothing but air, scraped over what felt suspiciously like an ANBU flak jacket, and when she landed on her spine with a smidge of chakra to cushion her spine, she hooked her leg out from under the ANBU and over his hip, using the force her her movement and anger to roll him over and off of her. He—she decided 'he' judging by the grunts—struggled beneath her, one hand punching repeatedly at her ribs that were, thankfully, covered by the flak jacket, and the other coming up the hand she had wrapped around his throat, scratching and clawing. She braced her knees against his hips, brought her free hand back, and slammed her knuckles into the porcelain mask. It cracked and fell apart upon impact—but so did his face.
Blood and brain matter sprayed in a wide arc in the mud around his head, landing on Sakura's face, hair, shoulders, and dousing her shirt and pants and flak jacket in gushing blood from where the artery in his throat flopped uselessly. What little remained of his bone structure and skin suggested she knew him from somewhere, but she didn't have time to care; where there was one ANBU, there was another, and clearly someone saw the destruction she had created outside Konoha.
Before she could reach for the pack at his waist, her hands caught her attention. Swollen and red, not just with blood but inflammation, she flexed them experimentally, cringing when stinging pain, not unlike that of a thousand bees, tore through her nerves as the adrenaline ebbed away. It looked as if she had severe rheumatoid arthritis, her fingers curling up and appearing like that of her neighbor's, Sayu. Biting her tongue, one by one, she began prying them apart from where they were curling against her palm, working them to a semblance of usefulness that was painful, shaky, but would work until she figured out something to keep them from flaring up. In the back of her mind, she knew it was her chakra doing this to her, but why now, when she needed it most?
Grimacing, she blinked away her tears and began rifling through the man's emergency pack. It was stuffed with blank sealing scrolls, a few high protein bars with better flavor than her nutrigain bars would ever have, a mission statement that she tucked into her inside vest pocket for later, soldier pills, food pills, dark hair dye, make-up, and, for some reason, an ANBU mask. It was nothing like she had ever seen before, the black and white design depicting that of a three eyed crow with crimson red markings upon the brow. It looked like something Sai would have made, with careful artistic touches and well meaning motifs. When she turned it around, there was a note tucked inside just under the elastic band that would hold it to her face. It was on a thick sheet of watercolor paper and her heart stuttered to a stop at the realization of just who had put it there.
Unfolding it, her eyes raked across the writing, Sai's handwriting, with a frenzy she didn't know she was still capable of.
'Ugly,' it read,'you've probably killed the messenger. That's rational of you. You most likely do not trust Konoha ANBU anymore and I do not judge you for it. You were my only friend after ROOT was disbanded and I will not forget that.'
It was as brief and insensitive as Sai himself, but in her heart, she knew what he meant. Swallowing over the knot in her throat, she tucked the letter into her bra where it would be safe, and transferred her pack and new supplies into the sealing scrolls. As she tucked them into various pockets on her person, she noticed a fresh puddle of blood beneath her feet—blood that did not belong to the ANBU and was quickly mingling with the mud and rain. Her eyes darted to the corpse battered by rain and sinking into the mud, catching sight of a tanto gleaming silver in his hand, already washed clean by the storm. Her hand drifted down to her flak jacket, near her ribs, where she counted fifteen individual punctures, each one clearing through the kevlar and piercing skin.
Sakura tore open her vest and pulled her shirt upwards, scanning over the holes in it and then the decidedly not so small bleeding holes in the right side of her abdomen and near her ribs, narrowly missing her lungs and other organs. Those 'punches' hadn't been fists—it had been the tanto. She didn't quite feel them like she did her hands, a faint pressure that could have been dismissed as her flak jacket, and an internal sweep that probably did more damage than good told her she needed to get stitches into them and fast. She was almost two minutes into bleeding to her death, but she didn't feel the typical signs of blood loss—she didn't even feel lightheaded.
She just felt… tired.
A scan of her inventory revealed no dissolvable stitches, not even sanitary bandages, just gauze and medical glue in a tiny blue tube that was better than nothing. She was risking severe infection like this, but she needed to stop the bleeding somehow, and began stuffing gauze into the larger wounds with muddy and stinging fingers, rain soaking them with possible contaminants. She worked fast despite dark spots starting to form in her vision, gluing the smaller ones first and then pulling out the gauze and gluing the inside of the wound and then pulling it shut. It was medical grade glue, so it would hold until she could get actual medical care—if anyone accepted her at all. Her face was probably plastered all over the bingo books, eliminating her from patient care in any nation. The only one likely to forego that general rule was probably Iwa, but she would never make it in time before her wounds began to fester and the fever would set in. It was highly unlikely she had managed to evade contaminants; she couldn't even check for poison in her body without her chakra ripping it apart, too. It was just as self destructive as it was destructive in general.
With her vision swimming, Sakura buttoned zipped her vest back up, closing her eyes and sucking in a quiet pained squeak when it pulled against the glue. She didn't feel any of them tear, luckily, and pulled Sai's mask over her face, if only to hide her tears from the world.
As she jogged into the trees and headed in a direction she thought a local village still remained, she was oblivious to the crow sitting innocently on a tree branch above her, melting and dissolving into ink when she vanished into the growing dark of the forest.
"She got it," Sai announced quietly, pulling his awareness from the ink bird and allowing it to fade in the rain. Across from him, Ino sighed in relief, pressing her hands to her forehead and then rubbing her eyes vigorously to hide the tears. Kakashi had taken up a seat at his bare table, but even he could see he wasn't gripping Icha Icha's spine quite so harshly. "She killed the messenger, but not before sustaining some severe injuries. She glued them together, but she once told me that—"
"—infection can happen anytime in a non-sterile environment," Kakashi finished, closing his book and tucking it away into his back pocket. He looked as ragged and run down as both of them, mask slightly askew and his hair not defying gravity as it usually was. Pakkun had voiced several concerns about him since Sakura had left, noting he was colder, harsher, with Tsunade and everyone in general that housed a certain opinion of his former student. "And Ame's a nasty place when it rains."
"Sakura's smart," Ino steepled her fingers. "She'll know what to do. There's a village not far from there, I think, full of civilians—they might help her for the right price."
"Not for an exiled ninja," the silver haired ninja intoned grimly. Any relief that had been previously on his face hardened into something a little more serious. He ran a hand through his hair and collapsed back into the chair, staring at the individual grooves in its surface. "Her best bet would be Iwa, but she'd never make it in time. She has twenty-four hours max before infection begins to set in, and Iwa's a week away on foot. Injured? She'll never get there."
"I don't know what to do." Sai blinked and shook his head. He could feel… something in his chest pulling and twisting, but had no name for what it was. Not exactly. He would have to consult the books Sakura gave him on emotions when he had the time. Her name, even mentally, made that twisting pain hurt a little more. "I should have gone with her. Maybe then, she would not have been in such a mess to begin with."
"Sai, no," the Yamanaka shook her head and stood, resting a hand on his shoulder. "Forehead needs you here. There's no telling when they might issue another mission if they find out she's still alive."
"Ino's right, Sai." Kakashi nodded somberly. "We can help her more from inside the village. For now, we all lay low, take missions as normal, and continue on like we have been. If anyone seems suspicious… take them out."
"T-take them out?" Ino spluttered, whirling around to face the older male, her pale blue eyes wide and surprised. "Shouldn't we—I don't know—recruit others to the cause?"
"You know as well as I do, Ino, that not everyone sees Sakura in a good light." Kakashi rubbed his face, fingers catching on the mask. "Pulling in others is suicide. We don't know what rumors have been spreading among ANBU, or even the populace to begin with. The only safe person might be Shikamaru, but I have my doubts about him, especially since he's ANBU now."
"I agree." Sai nodded. "Secrets are harder to keep between more people. It's best we stay like this for now, until we come up with something to keep the council off her back."
"But what are we even supposed to do?" Ino sprawled back on the couch, arms clenched tightly to her chest over a pillow. "None of us have ANBU clearance anymore, and I doubt they'll let Kakashi within a thirty mile radius of any classified documents about Sakura—and then there's Naruto. What if he comes back in the middle of this? What do we even tell him?"
Kakashi considered her words thoughtfully, rubbing his chin over his mask. "Naruto has always been one to see the good in others. He can't reasonably blame Sakura for her actions and look past Sasuke's string of murders these last few years; he may just be a gamble we can take."
"Dickless is out of the village, though," Sai pointed out. "We don't know when he will come back. What do we do until then?"
"Learn what we can," Ino said, throwing a pillow over her face,"and pray we don't get caught."
a/n: i really appreciate the reviews I've gotten so far! :) I'm glad you're all enjoying it. I replied to everyone, I believe, but that one guest, sadly, since I can't interact with guests. :( but anyways, expect the next chapter in a few days. have a lovely day/night!
