C/W: Recreational drug use
Chapter Three: Fragile Ties
At midnight, Sakura followed the attendant up two flights and a blur of hallways, until finally, an ornate double door. There was a telltale shimmer of genjutsu on the wall, with chakra- and sound- dampening seals.
Sakura walked into the dark foyer of a master suite. Voices and light spilled out from around the partitioning wall. The air was thick with the smell of sake and tobacco. The door to the corner room was closed…
She looked around: no guards. This was the perfect chance.
Quietly, she slipped inside. Oak desk piled with papers. Bookshelves. Three briefcases on the ground. His study!
Perfect. Sakura unstrapped the mic from her thigh and glanced around the room. Now, where to hide it… She was hunting for suitable nook on the bookshelf when a muffled scream made her blood run cold.
What was that?
Heart pounding, she crammed the mic behind the top corner of the shelf and Sakura dropped to the ground. On instinct, her hand reached for her weapons pouch, found the cotton waistband of her dress.
It came from behind the wall. Sakura snuck out of the office, around the wall, and through the door left ajar.
Higa's bedroom was a cavernous space the size of throne room, lit thoroughly with lamps. Dozens of open bottles littered the oak console table, and smoking ashtrays the bedside tables. An enormous bed stood in the middle of the room, wreathed with scattered sandals and discarded dresses, and on top were a tangle of limbs, fingers and toes in all direction.
Oh. That explained the whimpers.
"Someone's here, Higa-sama," said the woman facing the door.
"Hi," Sakura said.
Higa twisted, his back slick with sweat. "Who are you?" he panted.
"Nanami. We met earlier at your party." Sakura inched forward. Something was wrong with his breathing— deep, gulping breaths, like he was starving for air. "Are you feeling alright?"
Another shuddering breath. "Been better."
The cloying smell— it clicked. Sakura's eyes darted to the ashtray where a thick roll of pungent herb smoldered. Dry as a bone, hot as a hare, blind as a bat and red as a beet. It didn't take an apprenticeship with Tsunade-sama to put two and two together.
Higa collapsed onto the sheets.
The woman underneath him scrambled out and put her fingers against his nose. "H-he's not breathing. What do we do?"
They all stared at each other. Cold sweat broke over Sakura's neck. If she helped him, ID's legend was out the window— Nanami was a former server with no medical abilities. But if she did nothing, Higa could die. At the end of an exhale, Sakura said, "Ask the attendant for calabar seed and water. Close the door."
They dressed and scrambled out. Sakura carried Higa to the floor. The pulse at his wrist was feeble. She hadn't performed compressions since she was thirteen, but she couldn't risk him waking up with her chakra-laden palms on his chest. Her own chest burned with exertion. Luckily, her mic was secure.
One-and-two-and-three-and-four—
A man in a white coat burst in with Tanaka at his heels.
"Get off of him," the medic-nin said, palms glowing with chakra. In minutes, Higa was moving again. "How long was he down?"
"Maybe ten minutes?"
His head snapped to her. "You asked for calabar seed. How did you know?"
Before she could respond, Tanaka was tugging her out into the dark foyer. "You should wait in your room. It usually takes him a while to wake up."
She nodded, grateful for the reprieve.
Awake. A tight knot wound in her chest.
Sasuke was going to wring Kakashi's neck. He should've done it long ago, when he assigned him to Sai's platoon, knowing damn well he preferred working solo, or when he made those useless wellness evaluations mandatory for deployment, but this was the last straw.
The recorder crackled to life with her voice. "I'm back."
"I'll go," he said to Sai, who was equally to blame. After he was appointed deputy chief, their old team was disbanded. The final roster for Sasuke's own platoon was prepared— had been for weeks now— but Sai insisted on tradition: all first-time captains must be evaluated by their former. Which was fine, except scheduling a joint mission turned out to be a pain in the neck, between Sai's new administrative duties and Sasuke's prior commitments to months-long, deep-cover assassinations.
They'd settled for this— an easy espionage. In and out in a week.
Until Kakashi had thrown a wrench in their plans in the form of one Haruno Sakura.
Sasuke took a steadying breath and climbed through her window.
Sakura whirled to him. She blurted out, "It's over. His medic-nin knows, and his butler knows."
His boots hit the ground. "Tell me what happened."
Her suite was bigger than his. Sakura paced around the bed like a caged animal, speaking in shuddering breaths, winding a lock of hair tight around her finger. She kept throwing out words he didn't understand.
"What?"
"Kokova is narcotic that's popular in northern Wind," she explained. "Calabar seed is the antidote."
Oh. "Will it loosen his tongue?"
"Sure, right before it stops his heart." She groaned. "If you didn't know, how would a server know?"
"You saved him," he guessed.
She nodded miserably. "When he stopped breathing, it was— it was like muscle memory. I couldn't just watch. But now his medic knows and he'll tell them. What do I do?" Distressed green eyes turned to him.
Seeing her scared made him want to kill something. "You didn't use chakra."
"No."
"Do they know you're a medic-nin?"
"I don't think so, but they'll be suspicious. Servers don't know antidotes. It doesn't fit the story." She was going to light the carpet on fire if she paced any faster.
"So come up with something else." Not ideal, but few missions went exactly according to plan. Their best shot at avoiding blowback was to make the best of the situation. "Did you plant the mic?"
She nodded.
"Then it's fine."
Sakura stopped dead in her tracks. "Y-you aren't upset?"
"Why would I be?"
"Because—" She bit her lip and looked away.
His stomach twisted. Because she's afraid of you, said a voice in his head. She'd probably hoped for Sai, coming through her window. Sai set her at ease. "I'm not."
She looked relieved, if still glum. "Maybe Honjo-sensei was right."
"Who?"
"A medic I work with. He said it was reckless for me to go on missions. That I belong in the village, caring for patients."
"He's an idiot."
"Sasuke-kun," she chided. "He was head medic."
He shrugged. Still an idiot.
To his relief, Sakura sank into the chair. "Earlier, you said I was a courtesan and not an escort. What's the difference?"
He'd forgotten this was her first time in Stone. "Courtesans are trained professionals. Escorts are brothel workers."
"How long does training take?"
Sasuke thought back. It'd been a while since he'd done one of these too. "Longest we've said was a year."
"And procurers?"
"They work as agents. The women pay them to find new clients."
"But it's not an equal relationship."
"No."
Sakura nodded slowly. "I think I have an idea." She offered him a shy smile that made him want to dive out the window. "You two must be used to this. Thanks for helping me, especially back at the inn."
That was a huge mistake. If he could go back, he would've ordered Sai to do it.
"It must've been weird for you, doing that with— with me."
Was she embarrassed? He wasn't delusional enough to think she was still interested in him. Whatever remaining vestiges of her schoolgirl crush evaporated at the Valley of the End. He'd made sure of it when he drove a fist through her chest, and if there was any lingering doubt after, Kakashi took care of it.
She nearly lost her life to you. She cries every time she thinks of you. She doesn't love you that way , Sasuke. She just wants to save you.
"Can I ask you something?"
Don't.
Sakura closed the distance between them. "I know a lot has happened, and we don't— we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but I feel like we're drifting apart. Is something wrong?"
She was right up in his face, and he could smell her hair. A hammer started in his chest.
He knew what Kakashi wanted, why he kept assigning him to solo missions escorting Sakura out of the village. They were bullshit assignments, and Kakashi knew it, but every time Sasuke slapped the transfer request on his desk, he still managed to look disappointed. It wouldn't work. Five years was too long to apologize.
"Don't read into things," he said. "There's nothing between us."
"Nothing?"
The tremor in her voice made his chest squeeze. He should've tried harder to string the words together back then, but he was delirious with blood loss.
"Are you firing me?" Sakura asked.
The damned war. If he never lost his arm, never awakened the Rinnegan, he wouldn't need a medic-nin. Five hundred and twenty of them in the whole village, and the only one capable of managing his symptoms was Sakura. "No," he muttered.
"Oh, good," she said dryly.
He didn't return her smile. Sasuke left her room.
Kakashi and Naruto didn't understand. He'd put her through the worst years of her life. She had a career, friends, and plenty of male attention. She didn't need him. Sasuke would find another medic. It was the least he could do. Probation forbade him from leaving the village except for missions, but once he was leading his own platoon, he'd have complete autonomy over where they were deployed. There had to be someone else abroad.
Once he severed this tie, he could disentangle himself from her entirely. After some years, she'd remember him as nothing more than a distant figure of the past, and they'd both have their long-due peace.
