Okay, I have to warn you guys, this chapter may be...a bit confusing at first.
Few notes:
Sakura is born in December in this fic. Yes, I know that's not her real birthday in the anime.
Do NOT use any dates in the anime to chronologize anything that occurred in this storyline. For example, if in the anime Sasuke defeated PERSON A on say...May 1st, and that's obviously Spring, DON'T think it's weird if I say that PERSON A was hurt during the Summer because this is after all a fanfic.
(Also note that this example has nothing to do with the actual plotline of my story.)
Final note: I was never able to understand what "time" the Naruto universe was supposed to take place in, technologically speaking. There were episodes that Kiba passed messages on Akamaru to other people (so I guess they didn't have email or laptops?) and then there were episodes where Naruto's house was shown to have a rice cooker, like an electric rice cooker.
So….for this fanfic I'm going to say that Sakura has a computer and internet access in her room, alright?
That's it. Love you guys and hope you'll enjoy this chapter.
Sakura wasn't sure where she was.
She was standing on water.
Her feet met a translucent solid surface just centimeters beneath the surface as if there was a layer of glass beneath them. The water and glass-like substance spread as far as her eyes could see on all sides of her, looking never-ending.
Besides that, absolute whiteness surrounded her.
There was no wind, no earth, no solid mass anywhere around her. No humans. Her hands wrapped around herself protectively as she started walking.
Where in the world was she?
This couldn't have been Heaven or Hell, right? Shouldn't things be respectively, happier or sadder?
The last thing she remembered was getting stabbed by Tobi...and blacking out.
Where was Sasuke?
In an instant, the white world blew away around her with a torrid wind coming from straight in front of her. Sakura had to keep her arms crossed in front to protect herself from getting blown away.
When she opened her eyes, Sakura found herself in the middle of a nearly empty street, at night. She recognized the place: it was the departure road inside Konoha.
Standing on either sides of her were the younger forms of herself and Sasuke, with the Uchiha turned so that his back faced both versions of her. His hands were stuffed nonchalantly into his pocket.
"Why won't you ever tell me anything?" her younger form suddenly asked in a trembling voice.
"Why do I have to tell you anything?" came Sasuke's equally quick, though barely caring voice.
Her younger self fell silent with this, head bowing in shame and acknowledgement.
The real Sakura swallowed a hard lump that had formed in her throat. A mix of astonishment and...agitation forming inside her, mainly because of Sasuke's continued attitude towards her.
"I'm telling you now, you meddle too much," the dark haired boy said next, still having yet to turn around and face her. "Stop bothering me all the time."
It was clear the situation was breaking her younger form's heart, Sakura watched as tears started flowing from her younger self. The young girl fought hard to keep her sadness out of her voice as she pleaded with him again.
"I know what happened with your clan...but with revenge alone, you will not be able to make anyone happy...not yourself..." she added in a half breath, gaze averting to the ground: "Or me."
This barely phased Sasuke.
He went on to explain about how he couldn't be like her or Naruto anymore. That in the end, he was an avenger and had to walk the path of revenge.
Her younger self took one step forward as Sasuke made to leave again, to shout her last attempt to keep him:
"If you have to go...take me with you!"
The real Sakura gasped.
Her younger self continued her desperate plea: "I'm so in love with you I can't even stand it!" she shouted unabashedly. "If you would only be with me...I can make you happy! You won't have to walk this path alone!"
Sakura heaved a deep breath, controlling her sobs before continuing: "I'll even help with your revenge! So please!"
"I'm begging you...don't go!"
One silent second passed.
And then Sasuke turned around, finally coming to face her.
He smirked. "You're still annoying."
Her younger self gasped at this statement. Sasuke turned away and tried to leave again.
"Don't go! If you go, I'll scream and-"
The real Sakura as well as her younger self gasped when Sasuke moved at chakra speed to stand right behind her. The winds blew at both of their clothes as silent second passed.
Two seconds.
Three.
The boy whispered: "Thank you...Sakura."
Using her deviated attention to his advantage, the boy knocked her out with a palm to the back of her neck's pressure point.
Adult Sakura watched as the boy caught her and placed her down onto the nearby bench, before vanishing into the night.
The scene melted away, leaving the real kunoichi back inside that empty white room, bewildered beyond reasoning.
She'd loved Sasuke. That future raping psychopath had had her heart all along...so then why did he have to rape her? If he had reawakened her memories of him, then she probably would have easily submitted to him, given what she'd just seen.
Good god, Sakura couldn't believe she'd been such a sycophant. Love sick and completely servile to a boy that hadn't given a damn about her...
But then again, Sakura supposed she couldn't really blame herself, given that she didn't know what it was like to love someone in the way she'd just witnessed. In her fake childhood, she'd never had a crush on anyone, not even an unrequited one. Just because…
...Sakura thought back to what she could remember as her own life…
….just because no one had really caught her fancy.
Had she been waiting for Sasuke?
Sakura gasped as that question randomly popped into her head. Why had she thought that?
In the next second, the world around her altered again: this time shifting into a setting she knew unfortunately, all too well.
It was the steel bedroom Sasuke had kept her in.
And instead of seeing a preteen version of herself, Sakura saw herself, right now in her current age and state, lying in bed with a variety of IVs stuck into her arm. Her face was completely devoid of color and there must have been at least five bags of varying fluids running into her as they hung on a metal rack next to her bed.
Sasuke sat next to her, clutching her limp hand with both of his deathly tight.
For some reason, Sakura knew she was going to be sleeping for a long time.
And in fact, Sasuke seemed to know it too, because right now...Sakura was seeing a side of him that she'd never bore witness to before.
His eyes had grown deep dark bags under them, looking like he hadn't slept in days, or months? Stress lines marred his once perfect complexion as he just sat staring into her expressionless sleeping face.
Was this real? Was Sasuke really this worried about her? Sakura had always thought the man just saw her as a toy for his amusement, and given the memory of their childhood she'd just seen, she'd been even more certain of this theory.
So then what was she witnessing now?
Sakura gasped, in her ethereal, spiritual, or whatever form she was taking right now, watching Sasuke...worry about her.
Sasuke was a man of quiet beauty and even when he was sad he looked graceful being so. A few elegant tears fell from his face to land on Sakura's still arm, desperate to wake her but not knowing how to do so.
Standing behind him, watching him do this, Sakura felt something then. Raising her spiritual arm, she saw that there were indeed trails of tears on it. All too suddenly, she knew this was real. Somehow she was seeing herself through a bystander's perspective.
"Please...Sakura," she heard him say as he clutched her trembling hand. "Wake up."
"...please...just open your eyes."
This was the first time she'd ever seen Sasuke's perfect cool exterior break down. He looked so...vulnerable then, in that moment.
A part of her heart softened at the sight of him.
"You'll beg for an ounce of sunlight, for a breath of fresh air but I guarantee you won't get any, ever."
His words rang inside her mind and quickly she forgot any sympathy she had formed for the psychopath. If he cared so much about her then he should have treated her better when she was awake.
And yet, some deeper part of her heart, couldn't help...feeling elated, seeing him worry this much about her.
"I don't want to lose you again."
Sakura gasped at this statement. He must have been referring to when she'd first died.
But if he had brought her back once why couldn't he do it again? If something bad really happened to her, couldn't he just resurrect her again? Unless there was more that she didn't know about the ritual...
Also, she didn't understand how his opinions about her could have completely changed from the scene she'd just bore witness to, where she was literally pleading with him to stay with her only to get insulted and knocked out, to this present situation here, where he was the one obsessed and infatuated.
Sasuke brought her hand up to kiss and then kept it pressed up against his cheek.
"Don't leave me."
His head bowed down as he tried to control his emotions, spasmodic tremors simultaneously raking up and down his body. Sakura couldn't take her eyes off him, never having seen this side of Sasuke before.
He was calm. He was collected. He was emotionless.
He wasn't -her thoughts were interrupted as Sasuke suddenly burst forth from the mattress and raced to a nearby waste basket, vomiting violently into it.
Sasuke's body shook as he spewed forth nearly nothing but water and then yellow bile.
Was he not eating properly? Why was he throwing up? Was he sick?
The better question was, why was she worrying about him? He'd tortured her for an entire year!
But...Sakura couldn't help it.
Her heart pumped wildly inside her chest as she witnessed his distraught, broken form just because...of her?
Was she really the cause of all this for him? He really cared that much about her?
She stood in some kind of spiritual translucent form next to Sasuke as he heaved until there was nothing left within him. Sakura's hand reached out for one second as if to touch him, but she quickly stopped herself.
No, she couldn't be soft about this. She couldn't just forgive him so easily. Not a chance.
When his stomach was utterly empty, Sasuke stood up straight again and stepped out of her bedroom, pushing the steel door close on his way out.
She made to follow but once again the world around her melted and she found herself...not back in that white space...but rather in another scene from her past.
Only she knew this one all too well
It was the first time Sakura had ever tried to escape from Sasuke, occurring during her first week after he'd initially stolen her, inside that wooden log cabin. She'd succeeded not by outwitting him but rather because he'd let his emotions get the better of him.
The scene started with Sasuke entering the room, carrying a tray of food. Real Sakura turned to see her past self sitting uneasily on the single person bed.
However, soon as her eyes landed on her past self, the real Sakura found herself "sucked" right into the memory, as if it was happening to her all over again:
Sasuke had just come in through the door of the cabin carrying a tray of food, looking to be a sandwich, grapes, and a bowl of tomato soup. Sakura was waiting for him as she sat on the bed with her arms and legs folded so that her palms fell inside her lap.
It was the freaking fourth day of her stay here and she was getting so sick of this psychopath. After figuring out his routine and schedule for when he planning on feeding on her, Sakura had devised up a plan.
For her plan to work, she had to wait for him to set the tray of food down on the bed for her to eat, while he sat down on the edge watching her, before she could make her move. But for some reason, today Sasuke stood standing in front of her with the tray of food held out front of him.
"Stand up," he suddenly said.
Sakura scrunched her eyebrows in feigned agitation. "Why?"
"Today you're eating standing up."
"Why?"
"Because I can see the metal pole you're planning on knocking me out with once I set the food down."
Sakura's jaw dropped at his words.
No way! Sakura had taken care to only take the piece from the back leg of the mattress, that was still supported by a slightly thinner piece of metal but still left the bed plenty firm. And she'd only done this not more than 30 minutes ago, how in the world had Sasuke noticed it so fast?
The Uchiha rolled his eyes. "Get up already."
Sakura was too stunned to think of anything to respond with so she just mechanically obeyed him. She stood up and walked three steps from the bed (the maximum distance her chains allowed her) while Sasuke bent down to uncover the pole from underneath the bedcovers.
In that instant, while he did so, a high leg came aiming straight for his waist but without even turning around, Sasuke caught Sakura's leg with his arm. He turned around and pushed her leg back to the ground, standing.
"Finished? Can you eat now?" he asked her simply, like he was dealing with a difficult child.
Sakura had never met anyone like this man before in her entire life. How in the world could he predict her movements before she'd even acted?
Sakura conceded for now. Taking ahold of the tray, she looked down at the contents. It was a sandwich, some grapes and then a thermos of hot tomato soup.
As her eyes glazed over the soup, Sasuke suddenly said next to her: "Don't even think about it, you'd spill the soup on yourself before you got any on me."
Sakura sighed and resigned to her meal. After only a few bites, she stopped eating. Sasuke frowned next to her. He ordered simply: "Eat more."
She shook her head. "I can't."
Sasuke, with his arms folded in front of him, as he leaned against a nearby pole scrunched his eyebrows. "If this is some kind of trick-"
"I'm just not hungry!" Sakura shouted in fury and frustration, turning her back to him as she too folded her arms across her chest.
Sasuke whirled her back around by a grip to her shoulder, surprising her. "You'll get sick if you start neglecting meals."
Sakura threw his arm off. "Good! So then I can die and get away from you!"
She tried to step towards the mattress, wanting to just collapse onto the soft sheets, wanting to act just like a petulant child since he was treating her like one already.
But just as Sakura moved she was stopped by that same iron grip, this time around her elbow and much more painful than before.
"What did you just say to me?" Sasuke asked while jerking her around to face him once more.
Sakura didn't care if he killed her in that moment. "I said I'd rather be dead than be here with you!"
Sasuke raised his palm, firm and adamantly, as if to strike her -but he stopped halfway, struggling to restrain his anger in both his expression and actions.
Sakura remained stubbornly adamant. She raised her chin to tilt her cheek upwards right in the trajectory of his raised palm. "Do it."
Sasuke kept his mouth pressed into a thin line as he remained silent, using all his self control to keep his emotions in check.
But this only angered Sakura more.
"What? Are you too weak? Don't have the guts to hit your captive! THEN FUCKING LET ME GO!" Sakura shouted that last bit while pushing against his chest, her chains rattling as her punch did literally nothing to Sasuke. He didn't move; he didn't even flinch!
After a few seconds and a long intense stare at her, the boy finally lowered his arm, at a deliriously slow speed.
It was clear he was one hair width away from cracking. Sasuke turned on his feet and moved to leave the room before he did something he would regret.
But Sakura refused to let him off, wanting -no, needing to vent out her anger at him.
"You're so weak and pathetic! Needing to kidnap a girl just to get someone to spend time with you! You know what normal people your age do when they want company? They go to their friends! Their family! But you probably don't even have one because they all can't stand the sight of you!"
Sakura hadn't been able to say anymore because Sasuke had backhanded her, the force alone sent her reeling. She first collided with the nearby dresser before crumbling to the ground.
Sakura's vision spun around her as even her hearing was semi-functioning. Sasuke's strength was really surprising, given that he was a fairly lean thin man.
A sharp jolting pain from her stomach brought Sakura back to reality and she looked down for the source of the pain. To her horror, Sakura saw a large open wound the size of her entire palm lining the side of her stomach, already bleeding through her clothes.
Sakura's lips parted in shock as she stared at the gaping wound just weeping blood down her pelvis and staining her shirt and pants.
It was the dresser, it had cut her when she'd fallen.
Sasuke seemed shocked too, looking as if he hadn't meant for this to happen.
Bullshit! Sakura cried out in her mind.
But she accepted his help nonetheless as he shakily bent down to help her back standing up. Cringing pain exploded through her senses every time she moved her abdomen but Sakura ignored it. This was a rare opportunity that she definitely wasn't going to waste.
Sasuke just had to get a little closer...
The shaking Uchiha quickly moved to help Sakura back to sitting on the mattress. In her pallid state, Sasuke must have thought that she wouldn't bother fighting him.
Showed what he knew.
As soon as he leaned over her to check on the injury, Sakura used that moment to grab for the ring of keys that hung from his rope belt. In an instant, she'd grabbed it and was using it on her ankle restraints.
They opened right as Sasuke forced her onto her back and had her hands pinned high above her head. "Dammit! Can't you see you're bleeding!"
Sakura refused to give in as she continued flailing, because of her injury Sasuke wasn't using his full strength on her, letting Sakura be able to gain leverage over him for the first time since her captivity.
She managed to reach out and unlock her manacles.
The instant they opened, Sakura felt her chakra flooding back to her fingertips -she immediately punched Sasuke upside the head.
The man was forced to the ground as he lost his hold over her. Sakura made a clean break for the door and in an instant found herself face to face with the outdoors. The first time in four days!
Immediately, she made a break for the forest, knowing the trees would give her shielding.
Unfortunately, her wound was too deep and she'd already lost too much blood so her movements were significantly slowed. She moved at half chakra speed across low tree branches but just a few kilometers inwards and Sakura already felt herself panting, as she cradled her weeping wound with one hand. She'd been trying to send healing chakra into it to stitch the flesh but prolonged disuse of her powers made it hard for her to summon them now in a hurry, especially when she was panicking the way she was right now.
Her consciousness soon slipped as she traveled and she felt herself falling.
Then she was being cradled, she only had to guess by whom.
Sasuke had a mix of both fury and concern displayed across his beautiful face, neither emotion able to gain first precedence because as much as Sakura had agitated him, he could also see that the flesh wound had only gotten exacerbated during her flight for escape.
The man sighed as he brought Sakura's semi-conscious form back to the cabin.
The scene faded. Sakura gasped as she was shoved back into that white space, falling to her knees as she was unprepared for the force pushing her out.
What in the world was going on?
Where exactly was she right now?
It soon became obvious that whatever world she was in right now was some sort of amalgamation of all her memories mixed with scenes of her current comatose being.
Sometimes Sakura found herself in present time, back inside that metal room watching Sasuke as he took care of her, day in and day out. In the mornings, he would brush her hair and wash her face. In the afternoon he would come in to check on her IV bags that pumped nutrients into her body, switching them out if any were empty.
Sakura understood why he had to do this, since he knew nothing about the higher level techniques of being a medical nin, like controlling someone's body briefly to make them chew and swallow food while they were sleeping. If she still had her chakra, Sakura could do this with any Shinobi for about a minute, before needing to rest and recharge her energy. In her fake memories, Tsunade had taught it to her.
This thought brought a question to her mind. If her memories were indeed untrue then...were all the lessons/techniques she "remembered" learning and using also non-functioning? Sakura of course had no way of testing any of them out.
Perhaps Sasuke was giving her IVs just because that was the only real way to take care of a comatose patient?
But then again, Tsunade had told her that not all her current memories were incorrect...
….Sakura decided to stop thinking about this topic. Her self doubts would eventually drive her insane.
In the evenings, Sasuke would wash her body using a moist towelette before changing her into new clothes. This didn't bother Sakura nearly as much as she thought it would. Perhaps it was because she knew he'd already seen everything on her body at least a hundred times counting.
Surprisingly, he didn't speak to her sleeping form that much. Aside from the first incident when she'd seen him pleading for her to wake up, Sakura never saw him say another word to her. Maybe it was because of how practical and realistic Sasuke was, he knew that she wouldn't be able to hear her and so he stopped trying.
Truth be told, Sakura had half expected to see him force himself on her while she slept but he never did such a thing. Instead, he just waited by her side, watching her.
And then the scene would melt away, as it always did whenever Sakura tried to step out of the metal room he'd kept her in.
Then she would be back in that white space with the glass water floor, alone once again. Sakura figured that this was some kind of mental haven inside her mind, perhaps influenced by some outside chakra force to let her see into her life like a bystander, either in the present or the past.
She tried using this to her advantage, to gain insight into her forgotten past but the memories never came to her when she wished it. Or what she wished to learn about.
Instead, they occurred to her with seemingly random frequency.
And not just her forgotten childhood memories but even those from her kidnapped time with Sasuke, leading up to just before she'd been stabbed by Tobi.
Except, the weird thing was, whenever she saw something during her torturous time with Sasuke, Sakura found herself "sucked into" the memory. As if she was reliving the entire event again. Or as if it was just a normal flashback.
Whereas the memories from her forgotten childhood always appeared to her like she was watching it from a bystander's perspective.
Perhaps it was her mind's way of helping her distinguish between the two.
But it wasn't like she couldn't tell them apart from each other just as they were; Sakura was after all only a preteen in all the real memories of her childhood.
Sometimes, when a memory wouldn't appear before her, Sakura would use her free time to think.
And she did that a lot, just because there were so many things happening in her life right now.
At first, Sakura thought of nothing but Gaara. Where was he right now? What had Tobi done with him? Had he awoken? Had he survived? Had he...not survived? Sakura had quickly shaken apart this last thought. No, there was no way. Gaara was a resilient person. Somehow, he had safely escaped Tobi.
Hopefully.
Then she thought about everything he'd done for her. Everything he'd sacrificed. Everything he'd committed...just to keep her safe. He'd knowingly abdicated his throne as Kazekage so he could go undercover and watch her. She knew the laws of Suna, having once worked as a practice medical-nin there during the Fourth Shinobi War.
Or what she remembered as the Fourth Shinobi War.
In her "memories" the war had been started by a renegade ninja, having unleashed a series of catastrophic forces of nature simultaneously on all parts of the world. Every nation had then banded together to stop the autonomous hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and other natural disasters that came alongside "reanimated" shinobi, which were dead shinobi brought back to life. The war had lasted three years, ending right after her seventeenth birthday, and the year before Sasuke came to take her.
Sakura thought back to that time and remembered that the original instigator for the war, and the necromancer for animating all the dead shinobi was a man named….Kabuto, who had been working alongside Orochimaru, one of the legendary Sannin and the largest traitor to Konoha.
After Neji had rescued her and she'd found out about her incorrect memories, Sakura had specifically looked up these two names in her computer: Orochimaru and Kabuto, just to see if they were real.
And lo and behold they actually were.
There had even been a real Fourth Shinobi War, with reanimated-nin, just like she remembered. But then, she read more in depth articles and saw that it was actually started by a man named "Madara Uchiha" which was a name she'd never even heard of before.
Sakura had stopped reading after that because she hadn't wanted to confuse herself anymore than she already was.
So it was clear that a lot of major events in her memories were wrong…but where did that crystal ball come in?
The one that she'd found inside Sasuke's clothes when she'd searched his body while he'd been sealed by Gaara...the one that Tobi had used to show her that scene with Gaara saying he would do anything for her.
What key did it play in her life?
And what in the world did Tobi know about it? Why did he know anything about her? Who in the world was he, besides an Uchiha? Sakura kind of wished she'd done more research about the world now.
That crystal ball that the masked man had used to conjure up her memory of Gaara...she'd found it off of Sasuke. So it was probably safe to assume that her kidnapper knew more about her past than he was letting on.
Or actually, it'd never occurred to her that her memories weren't right when she'd been locked away with Sasuke for that whole year...because she'd only ever interacted with him during that entire time. And...she'd always just placed his genjutsu "events" to being some sick fantasy he wanted her to play out. It'd never occurred to her that they were real events Sasuke was trying to get her to remember by living out.
Besides the scene at the Great Naruto Bridge, Sakura had been forced to reenact quite a few scenarios Sasuke had presented to her.
...she actually couldn't think of any specific incident right off the top of her head but she was sure there were at least a dozen or more. Each one had always been in her preteen ages, and always seemed to carry one central theme: she was throwing herself at him in every scene.
Once, it was about fireworks, Sakura recalled as she finally thought of one. At the time, he'd already forced himself on her more than she'd been able to count. As such, her fighting will had been all but subdued by then:
Even though Sakura traipsed weakly and complacently to wherever he wanted her to go, Sasuke still dragged her with an iron grip to where he wanted to take her.
This time, his palm was enclosed tightly around her wrist as he made the two of them step into an empty open field in the middle of the night. About a league's distance away, past a forest, was a small village having some kind of celebration. They were releasing a multitude of fireworks, decorating the night's sky with beautiful fire.
They were currently on a sloping grassland, high above and far away from the village. There was no one else here except for the two of them.
Sakura stopped her own flashback to realize that...actually every incident of Sasuke taking her out of her metal prison was always to a destination devoid of any other person.
She guessed it was probably because he hadn't wanted anyone to see and potentially recognize her.
The man made her stop at the highest point of the grassland and forced her facing him.
Sakura knew what she had to do. Immediately, she looked up to meet his eyes, which had taken that familiar red shade that he always had whenever he was casting either genjutsu or some other jutsu on her.
Like always, the surroundings around her melted to become...a festival:
About five feet in front of she saw a younger version of Sasuke standing stoically with his hands nonchalantly stuffed into his pockets, as he stood watching the beautiful night's sky, littered with colorful bright designs. He stood on a level above the running children and noisy families of what looked like the streets of Konoha, as they released their respective fireworks.
In a second, adult Sakura saw herself, also in preteen form, also standing on the same level watching the fireworks. Slowly, her younger self inched closer and closer until their shoulders touched and she was gently leaning on him. Her head moved to place itself on his shoulder.
Sasuke stayed motionless for a second, before moving away.
The flashback ended.
Sakura found herself back on that flat grassland, nowhere near Konoha.
Sure by then it had seemed strange to her that he'd always chosen to show her what to do for his "fantasies" with younger forms of themselves but she had always just placed it on his psychopathy. He was insane after all, when did his actions ever need to make sense?
Now Sakura knew the truth.
Back on the grass declivity, Sasuke stared down at her with his eyes back to their normal dark shade. He was waiting.
Sakura obediently stepped to the side so that her shoulder came to line parallel with his. Just as she'd seen, Sakura moved slowly closer to him until she was leaning on his strong presence. Then she moved to place her head onto his shoulder, the fireworks of that lower village continuing to rush and explode into the sky above them.
But unlike the flashback, this older Sasuke didn't move away and instead stayed where he was.
This would have actually been a pretty romantic moment if it weren't for Sakura's trembling fear inside her heart. She was so terrified of doing something wrong and angering him, which she unfortunately did more often than she wanted to admit.
She didn't dare move from this position until Sasuke either told her to or he moved himself.
Which he wasn't doing even after five or so minutes.
Sakura dared a look up and saw that he actually had his eyes close, like he was savoring the moment.
He had a very peaceful expression on his face right then. Calm and graceful as his natural beauty worked even more with the setting around them.
Then his eyes opened and Sakura gasped as she was caught staring at him.
Her heart started pounding in her chest as Sasuke's dark irises fixed on her.
"I-I-I'm sorry!" she automatically started apologizing as he moved to face her completely. She stammered in paralyzing fear: "I-I-I didn't- I wasn't- I di-didn't m-mean-"
"Shh," Sasuke whispered in one of his rare peaceful moments with a finger pressed against his perfect lips.
He didn't react in violence like she'd expected and instead softly moved to hold the back of Sakura's trembling neck. His touch was cold but succeeded in calming her because of his gentleness.
Sakura's head got pressed into the warmth of his white shirt and came to line right in the center of his chest, over his loud heart. Like she always did when he hugged her now, Sakura made sure to wrap her arms around him, to reciprocate before he got mad.
The night's chill made her genuinely snuggle closer and this seemed to satisfy Sasuke even because she could feel the smile on his lips as he came to kiss her forehead.
This was so unlike him.
But Sakura couldn't complain, she much rather faced this side of him than all the others she'd been exposed to.
Sasuke moved the two of them to the ground and fear came to lace itself back in Sakura's heart. Even though she'd already been defiled by him countless times before, each time felt like the first and just as invasive. She obviously couldn't get used to being raped.
But instead of doing what she expected, Sasuke just lined her head up once more over his heart as he continued holding her.
And they'd fallen asleep like that. Sakura could still remember clearly waking up in his arms the next morning.
It had surprised her that the entire night he hadn't done anything with her.
But then again, now that Sakura could think about her past without being stressed to do so, she supposed there were quite a few times that Sasuke wasn't violent with her. There were even moments of...seemingly kindness towards her.
Like the time, he'd tried to cheer her up.
...on her birthday.
That's right. Sakura finally remembered after a second. At first, she couldn't seem to recall the circumstances of the event for some reason.
He'd kept her for a total of a year so naturally Sakura had had her birthday during that time. And in fact, would have completely forgotten about it if it weren't for Sasuke.
At the time, Sakura had thought Sasuke had just been either bored or sick of her incessant crying but now she realized that he'd genuinely wanted to see her happy.
Sakura had been crying quite a lot these past few days. Mainly because she'd realized she'd missed the Equinox Festival with her parents. Sakura had lost track of time by now but she was still able to tell significant passage whenever Sasuke brought her outside, by looking at the plants around her. Right now, it was obviously winter, which meant she had already missed the end of Fall and the Equinox Festival that came with it.
Every year she spent this day with them, gathering supplies, decorations and cooking food to place on their ancestor's graves at midnight. Everyone in Konoha did this and it was a fun holiday despite the slightly grim nuance.
At the end of the day, Sakura and her parents always had a feast at The Torii, a high end restaurant that they only splurged once a year to eat at. Actually, the place was a little too pricey even for a once-a-year trip but eating there always brought a smile to her mother's face.
Sakura knew her mother must have been worried sick about her ever since she'd gone missing. This fact alone sent Sakura's heart plummeting because she knew her mother inside and out. The woman always stopped eating whenever she was worried.
What if her mother got sick because of her? What if something happened to her while she was away?
Sakura knew she would never be able to live with herself.
And so for the last four days or so, Sakura had sobs racking up and down her form. She tried to stop whenever Sasuke came to see her but the sadness always won out in the end. Surprisingly, Sasuke never punished her when she failed to stop crying after he told her to do so.
Instead he usually reacted in a multitude of different methods but most he would do one of two things: either jerk her into his embrace so that she came to cry into his chest until she was done or until her sobbing depleted her of all energy and she fell asleep, whichever came first. Or the second option which sometimes did, was storm out of her room, slamming the door in his frustration.
This actually sounded like a good deal for Sakura because he never forced himself on her when she was already crying. But she could only cry for so long and eventually when Sasuke came back, her tears would have dried and he could do what he wanted again.
But this time was different, Sakura had been crying non stop, except for when she fell asleep, for four days now, at least.
This was mainly because at the thought of her mother, the pinkette had been reminded of the rest of her friends and family back in Konoha and the more she thought of them, the more she wished they could save her. But each day when she woke up again inside that metal prison, Sakura's heart would break because she would realize that they hadn't come yet.
After the fourth day, Sasuke had decided to do something about it.
When Sakura next woke up, she found the man next to her, sitting on the bed and waiting for her to awake on her own.
Of course, Sakura had been instantly frightened by the sight of him, gasping as she sat up and reflexively moved to press her back against the headboard.
Sasuke for once didn't get angry at her. Or at least, he didn't show that he was.
He pulled out from behind him a square box wrapped in navy blue wrapping paper about the size of a foot on all sides. The man motioned for her to take it which Sakura immediately obeyed.
Gingerly, she unwrapped and opened the white cardboard flaps.
She gasped. Inside was a stack of books.
She lifted up each one to read the spine and found that they were all her books! The ones she had inside her bedroom in Konoha.
Sasuke had went back there to retrieve them. What surprised her even more was that he'd actually grabbed only her favorite ones. How did he know?
Sakura looked up to meet eyes with Sasuke, her green orbs wide with fright. She wanted to ask him how he'd known but fear stopped her when his hand suddenly extended upwards.
His palm molded to the size of her cheek as he touched her, fingers gently grazing her skin.
"Do you know what today is, Sakura?" he asked in a breathy voice.
The pinkette shook her head without really thinking. Sasuke smiled and moved in forward so that his lips could just barely graze the top of hers. He whispered his next words: "Your birthday."
Sakura gasped. December 30th? Really?
She quickly did the math in her head. Then that meant...she'd stayed nearly four months with Sasuke!
Sakura locked gazes with him as the boy moved away but still stayed sitting on the bed. He pulled out from his pocket a black blindfold. Her eyes instantly widened in terror as she saw it because he sometimes liked to use this on her when they were coupling.
"Put this on," he instructed while dropping it into her lap.
Sakura looked at the solemn dark cloth for a moment, not touching it yet. Sasuke's weight shifted next to her and she could tell he was getting impatient.
Sighing, she conceded and wrapped the cloth around her eyes.
Almost immediately, she felt his lips upon hers, kissing her fervently. Sakura couldn't keep up with his passion and instinctively squirmed in the kiss after a while.
For once, Sasuke separated when she wanted him to, but he seemed to be staying close to her because she could still feel his panting hot breath.
"Sakura…" he whispered heavily. "Are you…"
He hesitated. This was the first time she'd ever heard his speech falter. The first time she'd ever heard him hesitate.
"...really unhappy, staying here, with me?" he asked her up close and the way he said his words, made him seem so vulnerable right then.
Sakura gasped in present time. What...she didn't remember going through this...least of all ever seeing this insecure side of Sasuke.
The memory continued:
"Sakura," he said her name again as he cupped her face with one palm, with the blindfold still over her eyes. Sakura swallowed nervously as his fingers slid down the curve of her face until he lifted her chin up.
She expected him to kiss her again but instead, she just felt Sasuke's lips against the side of her neck. He whispered against it once more: "I love you so much you don't even know."
Sakura gasped. What in the world was she seeing?
What in the world was happening? She definitely didn't remember him saying this to her!
But by the length of her hair Sakura was sure this was in the past, right before he'd had it cut.
Her past self gasped just the same and it was clear by the astonished look on her face that she had not been expecting that confession. She also had no idea how to respond to it.
"Sasuke…" she started saying but bit her lip in the middle, nervous and still frightened of him. But not quite as much as before.
"Today's your birthday, so I'm going to tell you the truth," he stated matter of factly. His weight shifted next to her as he moved to line his mouth up against her ear, whispering breathily again. "I can't stand the way I feel about you."
"I think about you every second of every day," he stated, causing Sakura to gasp. "I've tried so many times to stop but it always comes back."
His hot mouth that was pressed against her ear caused both ears to blush red. Suddenly, he bit her. The action was more of a love bite than punishment; more firm than agonizing.
Nonetheless, Sakura inhaled sharply at the action. Sasuke pushed her face up against the wooden headboard of the bed so that her left cheek was forced against the smooth wood.
"I've even tried hating you," Sasuke suddenly seethed, causing her to shiver at the familiar menace inside his voice.
But a second later it disappeared and became replaced with his...almost broken voice once again. He sounded weak and vulnerable once more.
"At first, I just wanted to punish you for what you had done to me," he explained heavily. Sakura sucked her bottom lip as he continued: "To just take you so I could finally stop obsessing."
"But every time you cried…" he trailed off here, only to add on after a moment: "I...lost all resolve to hurt you."
"Then why did you still rape me?" Sakura found herself asking without thinking, without hesitation until the question had left her.
Sasuke didn't immediately answer.
A few seconds later, he said: "Because I wanted to revive my clan."
"That day, in the cemetery, was the anniversary of my brother's death," he confessed truthfully. "He died because of me, because of my mistake…I was...overcome with grief at the memory of him and the slaughter of my clan."
Sakura swallowed again as he continued: "I'm the last of my bloodline and...for the first few months I just wanted to...use you…"
The boy's voice trailed off.
Sakura felt her chest tighten in fury. Her hand constricted into a fist on the bed covers as she felt Sasuke's weight shift next to her.
Suddenly, she felt him pull her fist upwards. Oh god, he had seen? Was he going to punish her?
But to her surprise, she felt...his mouth on her wrist. The feel of his kiss surprised her and Sakura's fist slackened. She felt his hand unfolding her fingers, one by one until her fist was undone.
"I'm sorry," he suddenly said before kissing the soft skin of her palm.
Now Sakura was truly blown away at what she was witnessing. Had she just heard him...apologize?
Sakura felt her heart soar as his weight moved away from her, though still staying on the bed.
"Does this mean you are going to let me go now?" she asked hopefully, eager almost. "Please?"
He didn't respond for a long tense moment, then he answered simply. "No."
She felt Sasuke's hands move behind the back of her head, undoing the knot that secured her blindfold in place.
"But you said you loved me!" she tried countering. "You said you were sorry! If you really love-"
"I do," he admitted, interrupting her. "So much more than I can stand."
Present Sakura gasped. Where had she heard that before?
"So if you were to leave, if you were to go...if I couldn't see you for just a day," he moved and placed his mouth up close to her lips, not kissing her completely as he whispered the final phrase: "I would go insane."
Sakura found sobs rising up her chest again as he moved away. He loved her but where did that leave her now? What in the world did his love mean when she couldn't even have her freedom?
She found herself asking him in a broken voice:
"Why did you even tell me all this?"
"Because you won't remember any of it tomorrow morning," he stated while simultaneously ripping off her blindfold.
In an instant, flashing red caught her eyes and Sakura felt the world around her blacken.