Note: Everything from the start of the story till the end of it (that obviously hasn't occurred yet) has actually happened and Sakura's memories /thoughts are not incorrect there. So yes, Sasuke really did rape Sakura and imprison her for a year.
Sasuke sat next to an open campfire as Sakura slept on the opposite side.
She'd fallen unconscious immediately afterwards and Sasuke had laid out a tarp for her to rest on before placing a few large tree leaves over her as a makeshift coverlet.
He'd then set to air dry all of their clothes. He'd changed her and himself into the spare set of clothes he'd brought. Now she was dressed in that iconic battle ware of hers that he had never paid attention to in the past before.
That battle-ware of hers that now he couldn't stand seeing her wear anything but.
Sasuke couldn't help smiling as he saw her stirring in her sleep, mumbling incoherently. She was acting, as much as he hated to admit to liking this, so cute.
She was probably the only thing with a cute side that he would like.
A few leaves fell off her shoulder and the pinkette was now shivering. He moved over and extended his hand to replace them when her palm suddenly shot out, grasping his in a vice-like grip. He thought she had awoken at first but then he saw that her eyes were still close.
He tried prying her grip loose but Sakura suddenly cuddled against his soft hands, caressing his fingers with the softness of her face.
Sasuke gulped.
He tried prying himself out when she suddenly cried: "No! Don't go!"
"I don't want you to…leave me…"
Sasuke smiled at her statement; he thought he would never hear her say those words to him again.
"…Naruto."
The Uchiha's eyes tightened in fury. Naruto. NARUTO?
He bent down low, ready to jerk her awake and punish her for thinking about the retarded blond boy when a loud explosion suddenly sounded behind him.
Sasuke turned with lighting reflexes in its direction; judging by the rustling behind him, Sakura had woken up too.
When his sharingan took in the sight before him, he growled in fury.
Or rather, the sight above him, floating on a cloud of dust.
"Gaara of The Sand," Sasuke intoned angrily.
Sakura gasped when her sleep deprived eyes adjusted to the sight of the red haired allied Kazekage. After the Fourth Great Shinobi War, an alliance had been forged between Sunagakure and Konohagakure and the two villages now helped each other out thru trade or warfare.
And plus, Gaara was a good friend of Naruto's…so perhaps, if the red haired man could save her, he would be able to take her to where her best friend was presently at (after all it'd been a year since she'd last heard from him).
Sakura could only hope.
"Sasuke…" Gaara intoned slowly as he floated above the duo, with his arms folded across his chest. He carried with him his iconic sand filled gourd and dressed in the red robes he'd adapted to as Kazekage. His gaze locked with Sasuke's.
"Every Kage has received a personal plead from Tsunade to arrest you upon sighting."
Sakura gasped. Really?
That meant that…every village was trying to find her.
The Uchiha just laughed. "Is that supposed to intimidate me?"
Gaara continued: "As an internationally wanted man, you yourself should know what fate awaits you, should you be arrested."
The corner of Sasuke's lips rose, as if the beginning forms of a crooked smile, when Sakura suddenly burst standing up behind him and took off, in the opposite direction of both men, heading for the woods.
As soon as she got more than 3 feet away from the Uchiha, without him having to turn around or even spare a glance at her, a fiery wall of eight feet in height erupted from the ground around Sakura, completely caging around her in a circle.
"Ah!" Sakura gasped as she made herself stock still in the center. She had almost no leeway between herself and the burning walls. One false move and she would be burnt to a crisp.
Sasuke stole a glance at her out of the corner of his eyes and smirked, knowing she couldn't go anywhere or have anyone come near her.
The sand demon's expression had turned upright in shock when Sakura got imprisoned but now returned to their stoic state as he leered down at the Uchiha again. "Sasuke…if you care for the girl, you would let her go."
Sakura felt her heart skip at this statement.
Even though the sadistic man had just raped her a few moments ago…she couldn't help the elation that filled her at the possibility that…
The man's cold laughter, in response to Gaara, sounded unanimously into the air, breaking Sakura's heart.
"Let her go only if I care for her?" Sasuke reiterated the humorous statement. "Well, then I suppose, I could never let her go."
Sakura's expression paled.
Of course he didn't…
How silly of her.
He just…enjoyed using her body.
Gaara's expression deadpanned but he tried another approach, always the pacifist if it could be helped: "Sasuke…you and I both know she doesn't belong here."
Sasuke growled in anger at this statement, similar to when Naruto had told him that he 'would eventually lose interest' in her.
What made things worse was that Sakura had just heard everything Gaara had said. And she was learning too much. Even now he could feel Sakura's being stiffen up within his fire jutsu, as if in apprehensive confusion.
"You don't know what you're talking about," The Uchiha intoned strictly, the Mangekyo Sharingan appearing across his irises.
Gaara continued, undeterred. "Where she stands, right now, she is…an abomination."
Sakura gasped. What did the Kazekage just call her? She didn't understand why he would say that insult. Gaara was renowned for being a polite stoic man, never even resorting to insults for his foulest of foes. So why suddenly defame her like this? Unless, he had another reason for using that word…about her…
Sasuke growled again.
"I'll cut your tongue out. Then we'll see how you can convince me to let her go!" Sasuke intoned before suddenly propelling into the air with his Kusunagi aimed right towards the sand demon's head.
"Sakura!" a familiar male voice whispered quietly, though strongly, behind her and all Sakura could do was crane her neck to try and see through the flames.
She smiled at the familiar man crouched currently in the bush next to her.
"Neji! Thank god, get me out of here!" the pinkette cried in desperation, she could stand still like this for only so long.
Neji Hyuga focused his chakra into his eyes and called out his kekkai genkai: "Byakugan."
He examined every inch of the barrier and after a few moments, he acknowledged with austere apprehension, that the surface had no weakness.
"Sakura, I can't see any weak spot from the outside to undo this jutsu, try using your chakra fists to punch a wall from the interior."
"I-I can't," Sakura croaked embarrassingly. "Sasuke's crippled my chakra points."
Her ashen tone was expected: to be a shinobi without chakra was beyond condemning…and disgraceful.
Neji's face paled and then he moved to assess her statement, x-raying her entire vascular-chakra system. She was right. All of her chakra outlets were disconnected from the flow of her system and essentially the core. So she still had her chakra flowing (otherwise she would be dead) but she couldn't let it out anywhere.
Neji couldn't even fathom how Sasuke had managed to do this to her.
He sent a communication jutsu back to the ANBU headquarters: 'We need back up, fast.'
Gaara's breaths came in labored steps now as he stood up from where he had been thrown onto the surface of the pond. Cuts, bruises and opened wounds completely obscured his skin as he stood up on the water to face his equally wounded opponent once more.
Sasuke Uchiha was indeed a formidable opponent…but Gaara surmised that he was probably around the same strength as himself.
Where the boy won out on was his intellect.
While Gaara had been called a prodigy too, the Kazekage wasn't foolish enough to deny that Sasuke was better in this realm than him.
Because he didn't mind fighting deviously.
During one of Gaara's Barrage of Sand attacks that Sasuke had just barely dodged against, the Uchiha cast the Kazekage into a Genjutsu. Whatever the illusion was didn't matter because the sand demon quickly broke out of it-
-to see a knee come straight towards his windpipe.
Sand had blocked the attack at the last minute, preventing him from taking damage but the Kazekage suddenly heard a rippling sound from behind him. Turning around, he realized his mistake: the Sasuke that had kicked him had been a shadow clone and the real one had sent a series of Fireball Jutsus straight into the pond, causing rapid evaporation.
Gaara sent his sands into the lake, causing the entire bed to dry up and essentially dousing the flames but by then Sasuke's desired effect had already taken place: the air around them was now hot and thick with moisture. Fog settled around them in obscuring danger and as a result, Gaara's sand became slowed significantly because the grains kept clumping together when tried to manipulate them.
They wouldn't form properly or not fast enough and soon Gaara couldn't match Sasuke's speed in attacks.
There was something severely wrong with the fire before Neji.
Why didn't the nearby foliage ever catch on fire by the sparks it let out? And why would Sasuke ever take such a high risk in hurting Sakura, potentially incinerating her even, when all he wanted was just to keep her?
All of this added up in Neji's mind to say that the barrier was some form of genjutsu, cast onto whoever looked at it…but the Hyuga's Byakugan should have been able to see through any deception like that.
And it looked very real before Neji's eyes right now.
With Gaara's sand not working accurately, Sasuke had easily deposited hit after hit upon the sand demon who dodged about two out of every five hits.
While Gaara may have defeated Sasuke in the past…he was no match for the man anymore. The man that had sunken to the deepest depths of evil for power.
The Uchiha stood with his Kusanagi stabbed directly into the sand demon's chest, ready to deliver a final fatal attack with his left fisted chidori, and rid Sunagakure of its current leader once and for all…when a series of explosions suddenly sounded across Sasuke's ears. The Uchiha retracted his sword and covered his ears in desperate pain.
He turned his head frantically from side to side and yet couldn't see the explosions that were sounding so prominently and fatally close to him. There was nothing except the calm forest setting.
What was going on?
He turned his head now back to see that Gaara had gotten up and was now smiling…triumphantly.
The explosions stopped.
But so did everything else.
Sasuke realized with horror that the world lay completely quiet around him.
He was deaf.
Sasuke roared in anger as he summoned Susanoo, the purple aura skeletal demon from Hell. Before Gaara could leap away (having been injured so much that his speed had diminished), the creature had wrapped its claws tight around the Kazekage's body.
It squeezed.
Neji had no choice, he had to ask Sakura to touch the barrier. He himself had already tested the validity of its heat by cutting off a piece of the flesh on his arm (with a kunai knife) and tossed it straight into the flames. It had immediately fried to cinders.
Sakura had cringed at the sight, as much as she could, standing still. She couldn't believe Neji was still asking her to test out the heat, after that awful exhibition.
"I know it sounds insane but there are some jutsus out there that are tied in blood, so it will harm everyone except whom the justu is tied with."
Sakura's face displayed her skepticism.
"Trust me!" Neji hurried, desperate now. "I have personally witnessed jutsus like this and Sasuke cares too much about you to risk anything."
The final few words caught Sakura's attention.
He. Cared. For. Her.
Did he?
And how could Neji be sure when she herself…was pondering that question almost every time she was near the man.
Even now, Sakura still didn't know.
But…she wanted to find out.
Sakura tentatively extended her hand towards the heat, already feeling from it an uncomfortable heat reaching up to her skin-
-she expected to burn up at any moment-
-but she didn't?
Opening her eyes, Sakura saw that her entire forearm stood safely thru the fire wall, as if it was some sort of ghostly mirage, in front of Neji's bewildered vision.
Suddenly, Sakura felt herself wrenched out by Neji and was pulled running from the scene.
Red blood exploded everywhere inside Sasuke's vision, and the entire battlefield, as the Fifth Kazekage was no more.
The Uchiha, even though he was the victor had sustained significant damage during that fight, not even including that he was now deaf. Sasuke's breaths rang labored and heavy as his hands dropped to his knees, trying to steady himself. More than half of the skin on his left arm had been completely scraped off from Gaara's attacks and it was bleeding profusely now in a frightening manner.
And yet, Sasuke didn't care.
He summoned his remaining chakra and quickly stopped the bleeding. He wasn't a medical-nin by any means but every shinobi learned the basic tourniquet jutsu during the Academy which allowed a person to slow blood flow to an area for three hours, thereby stopping severe hemorrhages. After the three hours, the user had to undo the jutsu or risk damaging the cells in their limb.
Sasuke would have healed himself long before then.
He would defeat any enemy.
Any shinobi.
ANYONE.
That tried to take Sakura away from him.
Right as he thought that, his eyes caught sight of the now empty fire genjutsu.
Sakura felt it and so did Neji.
It was like an explosion of chakra, or anger, from the battlefield that they had just left behind at.
Sakura gulped knowing full well who it belonged to.
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
Almost instantaneously, Sakura's feet stopped in the forest tracks; she couldn't leave him. She couldn't leave him. He would kill her.
The abrupt stop had caused her to stumble and Neji's grip to fall from her wrist. The man turned back, thinking she had tripped and moved to help her but Sakura suddenly slapped his hands away.
Neji had thought she had gone mad.
"No!" Sakura stated suddenly as she fought to get away from his palms. She stood up on her legs. "Just go! Y-you can't be seen with me when he-"
Sakura's words were cutoff when the very man she was trying to get back to transported to right before their vision.
"Sasuke!" Sakura cried while running to his form and -to both Neji and the Uchiha's surprise- wrapped her arms around his waist. At first Sasuke thought it was some kind of deception but the girl soon started sobbing into his blood caked shirt. "Oh god, Sasuke. I-I-I didn't mean-I'm sorry-"
She cried into his hold as his arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her in closer.
His Kusunagi extended out towards Neji as his Mangekyo Sharingan flashed dangerously towards the Hyuuga, who was all but bewildered at how...devoted Sakura was to Sasuke. Or frightened.
"Wh-what in the world have you done to her?" Neji seethed furiously. Sakura was a friend he'd known since childhood and he would be lying if he said that he didn't care for her, though only in the platonic sense. And to see what was once a strong independent girl like Sakura Haruno become like this…
"You sick monster!" Neji shouted before sending a fist towards the Uchiha's head.
Sasuke blocked the hit, easily with his arm, while holding onto Sakura.
His Mangekyo Sharingan flashed, casting a Genjutsu but Neji saw right through it with his equally powerful eyes.
"Eight Trigrams: Air Palm!" Neji shouted before sending a blast of deadly chakra straight into Sasuke's abdomen.
The Uchiha took the full impact of the hit because his movements were still slowed from the significant chakra and energy he'd exhausted during his match with Gaara.
With the precision of Neji's attack, Sasuke was separated harmlessly from Sakura before he was sent spiraling horizontally through the air, some twenty feet away. The man's back collided with a thick spiky tree trunk and a sick crack sounded into the air before his body slumped to the ground.
Sakura's eyes widened.
Sasuke.
Acting purely on impulse, Sakura tried to run to help him but Neji's hand locked around her elbow, preventing her.
"No!" she cried frantically, with genuine tears already in her eyes. "I-I I can't just- I-"
Sakura didn't know what she was saying. "I have to help him!"
Neji suddenly jerked her violently, by her shoulders, to face him. "Sakura! Wake up! He's the enemy."
The pinkette parted her lips to respond but just then a deep seeded groan sounded before them and both of them looked to see that Sasuke was starting to recover. He got up on one knee, as if to propel himself up again-
-but he collapsed again while vomiting up a slew of blood.
"Sasuke!" Sakura cried in horror and started to shake Neji off again, now more than ever. The Hyuga knew he had no choice; with one slice of his palm, against the back of Sakura's neck, the pink haired kunoichi collapsed instantly into Neji's arms, unconscious.
Neji's Byakugan flashed again, locking with Sasuke's eternal Mangekyo Sharingan that glared at him with absolute fury, as if saying: Don't you dare take her.
But Neji vanished nonetheless.
Unbridled fury begot in the pit of Sasuke's heart but he soon lost consciousness as well.
"I…I can't believe it."
Sakura heard the words, from somewhere next to her. Her eyelids felt too heavy still; she couldn't open her eyes. The voice sounded familiar but she couldn't identify it as it continued speaking:
"Sh-she, she's actually…"
"Be a little quieter, you might wake her," another female voice spoke and somewhere in the back of Sakura's mind a name started appearing: Shiz…une?
The first voice spoke again: "But she's actually here! In Konoha…this, this is…"
"…unnatural." Sakura recognized that last voice. It belonged to Tsunade.
Finally, Sakura had garnered enough strength from the voice of her mentor: she burst awake, sitting up.
Immediately, Sakura recognized her surroundings: Konoha Hospital. She'd spent most of her latter adolescence through it, being trained as a medical-nin. She was the only patient presently inside this medical quarter and standing by her bedside was Shizune, Tsunade and…Tenten.
Tenten suddenly ran up to hug her.
"Oh Sakura," the girl said, unaware of the way her hair buns were poking into Sakura's eyes uncomfortably.
The pinkette raised her hands up to hug the girl back, albeit half-heartedly. Truth be told, she'd nearly all forgotten about the girl during her captivity.
"I've missed you so much."
Sakura parted her lips, to respond with the same line but Tsunade suddenly grabbed a hold of Sakura's hand, as she was still being hugged by Tenten. The Hokage took her pulse and then her vitals (during which she ushered Tenten to let go) while Sakura just sat idly at the side, mind completely distracted elsewhere.
How was Sasuke?
How were his injuries?
Was he still…alive?
That last question nearly brought tears into her eyes. A silent croak was mouthed by her lips as the pinkette dipped her head low to the bed.
"Sakura, are you okay?" Tsunade asked her while gently making her lie back down. The Hokage saw the way her eyes glistened. "…is there something troubling you?"
The pink haired kunoichi opened her lips to respond…but she only just shook her head.
Tsunade sighed. "Sakura…"
There was an odd tone to her voice, like she was hiding something yet also trying to bring it up.
"How much of last year do you remember?" the Hokage asked her carefully and Sakura tried to think back…but every time she thought of anything Sasuke's face would just appear in her mind and divert her thoughts. His eloquent fingers. His beautiful silky hair. His...touch.
Sakura gave up after a few minutes, shaking her head and pressing her palms against her eyelids, frustrated. "I-I don't, I can't really think right now."
Tsunade hummed to let Sakura know it was okay. The pinkette inhaled sharply for a few moments, before finally letting her hands fall to her sides again.
It was only then that she realized that Tenten was no longer facing her, in fact, the girl's shoulders were hunched in a sort of shaking wounded way.
Next to her, Shizune had silent tears streaming down her face.
What was going on?
Her expression showed her confusion and Tsunade, who was the only one of the visiting trio that hadn't started sobbing yet, grasped Sakura's hands gently into both of her much bigger palms. "Sakura…you-"
The blond woman cut herself off, emotion rushing into to her voice as well, to make it croak.
Tsunade cleared her throat to continue again when Sakura suddenly cut in: "Where's Naruto? Kakashi? Ino, Shino, Shikamaru…and everyone else, how come only Tenten was here to see me?"
Tenten turned around quick, showing her tear streaked face, to chime in quick: "They wanted to be here, really they did. They've all just been delegated-"
"I've sent them to the borders. To the outskirts of Konoha and rid off any potential threats." Tsunade finished quick. "It has become quite evident that Sasuke-"
"So he's alive?" Sakura interrupted with wide eyes. Her mind raced back…trying to think…Neji had injured the man, before knocking her out. Knowing the Hyuga, the man would most likely go back to arrest Sasuke or execute the man right there.
Tsunade, Shizune and Tenten all noticed the excitement in her voice, perhaps more than a victim should feel for their attacker, but none of them chose to address it right then. They had far more pressing issues to confront at the moment.
The Hokage grasped Sakura's shoulders to get her attention again. "Sakura, focus, you need- I need to tell you something."
The firmness in her tone, slightly frightened her but the kunoichi fell silent, eyes locking with her blond haired mentor.
"You're…technically not alive right now."