nana.
SAKURA WIPED HER mouth free of the last of the moonshine and regarded the empty bottle with little more than disappointment. She had hoped it would last longer than it had, but she had been taking generous swigs from it without a second thought—then filtering it through her system on autopilot, even though the faint twinge in her kidneys suggested that might not have been the smartest decision she had ever made. If she drank any more alcohol, she would probably put herself into kidney failure because of her own chakra's predisposition to mutilate her when she tried to use it on herself. Tsunade had certainly used the technique enough that her kidneys weren't in the best of shape, either, but Sakura was quickly growing tired of all of her memories being linked back to her former mentor.
She tossed the bottle into the bushes lining the side of the rugged dirt path she walked on. It had split off at some point, into a disjointed 'y', a second time after the first, and she had taken the one that seemed to lead in the general direction of Amegakure. The general flora she spotted along the way seemed to connote she was in the right place, and the heavy downpour was evidence enough after the fact, but her senses were just dulled enough that she doubted herself several times while attempting to gauge direction with a nonexistent sun. The thick clouds that had rolled in seemingly within an hour blocked any light from peeking through and, simultaneously, made her rain soaked body colder.
Mildly, after taking a few more steps past the bottle and entering a denser, more crowded part of the path, overgrown with shrubs and weeds and kudzu, she wished she had saved the bottle in hindsight. Getting blackout drunk was preferable to the mind numbingly painful bereavement she was going through even if she didn't openly acknowledge it herself. She might have thought she could cut her ties as cleanly as Sasuke had cut his, without a second thought or lingering emotions, but the longer she spent away from Konoha and the further away she got, the more she dwelled on it, the people within that, despite hating her now, she would miss dearly. Her parents might have been the only ones to love her still, but even then, they were civilian, and never did understand why she had become a ninja in the first place—a given that she had pointedly ignored in her childhood—much less why she would put herself in a position to take another's life, or for someone to take hers. It was almost ironic, in a way, that she had first been given the choice to spare or take a life, and now she would be forced to take it without speculating about the possibilities of saving anyone at all. The medic within her cried out at the fact, but it was strangled by the darker piece of introspection that had plagued her most of her life, more powerful than it had ever been before.
She had, tentatively, dubbed it 'Inner', as a child. A fractal of her personality or piece that didn't quite fit in the overall architecture that made up the identity of Sakura Haruno. It voiced the thoughts she never said, encouraged the violence she was not initially predisposed to, and had surfaced a little bit after their encounter with Orochimaru during their exams. She had rejected the therapy sessions Kakashi had signed her up for, and all the others after that even if they were ordered by Shizune or Tsunade. She would falsify the records before anyone had been the wiser, and had felt safe that no one was going probing around in her thoughts and emotions, much like Ino had when they had swapped minds for a brief period during a mission. Her friend had known too much (by then, her killings of her teammates, even in the early stages) so she had tampered with them. Admittedly, it had been too easy for her to do, but it seemed those memories had been leaking back to the surface and tempted Ino to turn her in. She didn't blame her for it, but she scolded herself for not doing as perfect a job as she should have.
Therapy might have helped her a little, but in the long run she had a hunch that she would have turned out just the same when it was all said and done. Whatever had made her chakra turn against her was destined to happen and those who had died were destined to die in some shape or form, if not by her then by someone else. She had just sped things along, in a sense.
Sakura knew she was dangerously close to excusing her wrongdoings as righteousness. She didn't have the right to excuse herself from it; that was for the collective of Konoha to decide. And judging that she was trudging down a muddied path in the pouring rain, debating her own crimes and psyche, they had made their decision before she had even set foot outside the gates. She couldn't judge them for making the choice they deemed right. She was persuading herself she was right, too, after all, though the back of her mind was whispering something differently. She recognized that she was becoming some perverted version of Orochimaru, or every other villain she had ever met in her journeys with Team Seven—justifying her murders as mercies, forgiving her judges as right as rain.
But she was no villain—yet, perhaps. Maybe one day, when she had her guard down and didn't think too hard about herself, she might become one. For now, she was content with being conflicted and angry and sad, as pathetic as it sounded to her in her head.
A crackle of lightning illuminated the sky, spearing through the clouds and bringing with it the ominous boom of thunder. The rain seemed to come down harder, somehow, and they landed on Sakura's scalp and shoulders like pinpricks of needles. She ducked underneath a bough of trees, shielding herself from some of the downpour, but found herself bumping into something else—something warm, unyielding, and distinctly human.
Sakura stepped backwards into a tree just in time for the chakra green-glow of a chakra scalpel to slice right where her nose would have been. Strands of wet, pink hair fell to the crushed grass and mud beneath her feet, and as she locked eyes with Kabuto Yakushi, she wondered how close he had been to actually mutilating her face.
"What a surprise to see you here," he said, by way of greeting. He nudged his glasses up with the tip of the scalpel, the lenses fogged with the humidity and rain, obscuring his vision somewhat. It was likely what had kept him from eviscerating her face entirely. "I would think Konoha's golden girl would be locked up safe in the bowels of the Torture and Interrogation building by now, if they had their way." He paused, considering, squinting. "Well, judging by your attire, you're a little less than a prisoner now, aren't you, Miss Haruno?"
She had long ago stopped speculating how Kabuto, and by extension, Orochimaru, got their information from Konoha. There were a plethora of sleeper agents within their ranks, as well as informants that scraped past the exams in order to appear normal and unremarkable. She and Shizune had been working to root them out in the hospital before she had been imprisoned, and clearly they hadn't been successful enough in any of their endeavors if he was up to date with current affairs. Well, maybe not all of them—he hadn't been aware she wasn't imprisoned up until now, which begged the question: what was he doing in Amegakure's borders in the first place?
Kabuto laughed lightly, twirling the scalpel backwards and holding it tight against the flat of his wrist. "Quiet, aren't we? I would have thought you would kill me on sight for stealing your precious 'Sasuke'."
"I'm not going to kill you." Sakura ignored the pointed probe, fixing him with a dismissive glance and turning her back on him. "I don't even have a reason to."
That seemed to take him by surprise. He made a strange grunting sound, likely his version of a hum of surprise, and she registered him putting away the chakra scalpel in the corner of her eye. "And why not?"
Sakura reached up and scratched her ear. She felt dried blood flake off on her fingers and wash away in the rain. "Why not? Sasuke does as he wants, and as far as I'm concerned, you're not much of a threat without Orochimaru around—"
"—who said Orochimaru was dead?" He tutted, as if he was disappointed in her information. He watched her tilt her head, open mouth obscured by the mask but tell-tale by the way her throat flexed, and smiled menacingly. "Yes, Sasuke was not very thorough in his mission to get rid of him. Not as much as he wished he was, anyways; he always did slack in his medical training, if there's to be any consolation for him."
She honestly expected nothing less from Sasuke. She still struggled to process that the nightmare that haunted her dreams, still, was still alive, so she settled for a neutral,"I imagine. Medics are weak to him, as is everything else I'd suppose."
Kabuto regarded her with a strange look in his eye. "You're very different, Miss Haruno, from the last time we met."
"I would hope so." Sakura shoved her hands into her pockets to hide the way she clenched them into fists. He made her nervous; his eyes were dark, twin beads hidden behind the veil of his glasses. He appeared almost harmless, but she knew better despite her earlier words. "It's been almost a couple years since."
"Yes, I recall the Jinchuuriki wounding Orochimaru-sama quite grievously then." His smile was brittle. "I wonder how you fare, now that you have no medical ninjutsu to speak of—would you win against me?"
"It would be no contest." She shrugged as if she was stating a fact. She wasn't sure how easily she'd be able to take him on even footing, but one well aimed hit to his side would ruin his organs and cause him to bleed out, so not too difficult. "It wouldn't take much."
The silver haired male inclined his head curiously, tilting it back to stare at the unforgiving, cruel beak painted onto her mask. "I see. How enlightening."
Sakura was antsy to get away from him. She wasn't certain if he would let her go or slice her Achilles' tendon and drag her back to Orochimaru's twisted labs. Now that she knew he was alive, she didn't want to be within fifty miles of the man, and cursed Sasuke for being an elitist piece of shit. If he had learned just a fraction of medical ninjutsu she might not be in the mess she was in; but then again, had she not learned it either, neither would she.
"If that's all," she began, stepping back out onto the path and into the open,"then I'll be going."
"Hold on a moment," Kabuto said, after a brief pause. He seemed to consider her once more, then shook his head and held out a thin piece of paper. Even wet with rain, she recognized it as a summoning seal, flourished with Kabuto's unique signature. When she made no move to accept it, he sighed. "Right—obstinate and suspicious until the end. Sasuke's words, mind. I want to offer you a deal, or… a mutually beneficial commision, if you will."
"What?" She asked, her tone clipped. None of this spoke of being anything but a setup. "I don't think anything you can offer me would make me work with that snake."
While he didn't seem to appreciate her calling Orochimaru a snake, especially to his face, he suppressed the visible irritation starting to crawl over his face and offered the paper again. "That seal on your forehead says otherwise. It's curious how the Byakugou changed so easily, when it is a seal opposed to change; but, like I said, this is optional, and has no time limit. Consider it."
And she did, for a brief moment, taking the paper and staring at the unsmudged ink. While Orochimaru might be her fear, he had resources that Tsunade, and the whole of Konoha, did not. Unscrupulous, illegal ones, but ones that might have her answers where legal, safe ways wouldn't. In the same vein, she would tempt walking the same path as Sasuke—and that was something she just couldn't do.
Before she could open her mouth and deny his request, Kabuto was already gone, not even a trembling leaf to indicate where he had gone.
His words rolled around in her mind as she tucked it into her flak jacket's breast pocket, turning on her heel and walking back where she could hear the sounds of battle. Of swords clashing, jutsus being cast, water rushing past her feet and stained with blood.
'A seal opposed to change,' he had said, but… what had he meant by that?
a/n: hello lovelies! i hope you enjoyed this chapter. I'll be alternating chapters between Bleed For Me (KakaSaku) and this fic, so it'll be one update here and another there. Please check it out if you like werewolves, lycans, dark content, and the smallest smidge of soulmate dynamics; I'd love your opinions on it, as well as this chapter. Have a nice day/night!
