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soft caress, a white fingered grip, the hit the hit the hit

-o-

In his room, Shoma had four columns bordering his floating platform bed, and between each there were curtains that ran to the floor. The inset fireplace from the opposite wall turned the sheer white fabric a dark, warm gold and everything else was shadow and the lining of veiled light. The ceiling was high and decorated above the bed in a lattice pattern of woodwork, but Reina couldn't see that detail very well at the moment.

"You're always thinking," Shoma said. He was curved around her and his voice, low and drawn and textured, came from above her head. His breath was a light touch on her hair, even and constant. "Isn't it exhausting?"

He wasn't criticizing her, just observing. And he wasn't wrong.

She made a noise that wasn't really anything distinctive beyond, 'I'm acknowledging you spoke.'

"I want to show you something," he said, and a little eagerness tinted his words. He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head before pulling away. He was smiling like a child with a secret. "Wait here. I'll be right back."

In two minds, she wondered what he was up to when he didn't return for several long minutes.

Finally, she heard his footsteps and quiet murmurings as he entered the bedroom. She smelled grass and dew on him as he pushed the curtains back. One arm was wrapped protectively across his chest and she saw something moving there.

Shoma inched his way across the mattress to where she had propped herself up on a stack of pillows. He cleared a space in the sheets between them before placing down what he had been carrying in his arm. It was a wispy ball of fluffy hair that twitched quickly.

Reina cooed unintentionally at the baby rabbit. "It's so tiny!"

"Isn't she?"

"She's so soft!" Reina ran one finger down the rabbit's back, petting the long hair. In another second, she had picked it up and was cradling it against her chest. "She's so little."

Shoma resumed his place curled around her, and they both indulged in babying the animal.

When he spoke again, he was wistful and nostalgic. Sad. He said, "Azusa and I were married when we were eighteen. She miscarried three times."

Azusa had been killed by the Carbon Man's mercenaries. Reina knew that much about the woman. Aside from an altar in her memory in a private room, the estate had been cleaned of her presence.

"She really wanted to be a mother. We kept trying. She was... When she died, she was..." Shoma didn't finish the thought, but the intent was apparent.

Reina let some of her weight lean into him and he gratefully rested his head on hers.

"They take and they take," he said, and she knew he was referring to the Carbon Man. There was anger in him, but there was more anguish. He had listened to Reina's thoughts about expanding some of their 'interests' in to the Carbon Man's territory, of subverting the man's financial means and taking the metaphorical rug from under his feet. Shoma had agreed to go along with the plans, but not for any monetary stakes. He hated the man.

Shoma whispered another confession to her, more roughness of emotion than before, quieter and remorseful, "I really wanted to be a father..."

Reina didn't say anything.

-o-

The messenger hawk was waiting for her on the roof of her intended's quarters. Reina's intended's quarters. The hawk waited for Sakura on the roof of her mission cover's quarters.

Sakura secured the wraps around her wrists, the last bit of her unmarked uniform for the night, before accepting the scroll from the hawk's outstretched foot. Ken and the rest of their cell were circling her on the peripheral of the territory, never staying in one location very long, but his messenger hawk found her twice a week with updates. She unsealed the scroll and read over Ken's message; he gave her the official approval of her suggested replacement for the Carbon Man, followed by instructions for her next movements.

She left the estate to do more reconnaissance around the mill operation. It was her duty to infer possible points of contention, figure out how she could make a new boss an attractive option for the people working under the Carbon Man.

Sakura didn't have any trouble finding potential weaknesses; the people working for the Carbon Man lived mostly in a shanty village around the mill. From her perch in the trees overlooking the hastily and shabbily assembled shacks, she could tell that the men and women were in miserable living conditions.

Yuzuho would look like a god if she could provide clean and accessible water. ...Properly built barracks, sewage management, reliable electricity, health and medical treatment... Sakura had a checklist of offenses to consider.

The most enticing would probably be wealth and security, she thought. Perhaps the most successful way of undermining the Carbon Man would be to find and destroy his money. It was one thing to shave off money for himself, being that he was the man on top, but what a tragedy if the Carbon Man were then very publicly to lose all of it.

Putting these actions into place would be another step for another night, and so, with her new plan in mind, Sakura dropped from the canopy to make her way back to Miyabe's estate on foot. She didn't have a sense of urgency to hurry –she had a clone feigning sleep in her room– but as she walked, something began to feel off. She realized what was different in the absence of the common noises of a winter forest, the calls of owls and the rustling of small animals, that had accompanied her all night. The unease of something being too quiet.

Sakura made the fatal mistake of tensing her body when she caught onto the atmosphere, and she supposed it was that change in her body language which spurred the person tracking her into action.

The whistle of metal through the air and she dropped to her side to avoid the weapons. The kunai were a feint, and she was unable to roll away from the drop kick coming for her fast enough. She was on her back and she threw one forearm up to take the brunt of the hit, the other arm up so she could grab the person's leg to trap them. Finding a hold, she pinched deep into the tissue of her assailant's leg, clawing for the artery in their inner thigh, and pushed all her weight in one direction to pull the person to the forest floor with her.

Several factors were not in Sakura's favor: she did not have her weapons and equipment; she was alone; she was the prey of a stalking enemy and had been taken by surprise; and she could not use any techniques that could be traced back to Konoha.

Sakura yelped out a short cry and amended –she was also injured.

The person had stabbed her under her shoulder blade and it felt like the instrument was still lodged into her back.

On the ground and the two of them had devolved their fight into a wrestling match. It took Sakura a second to tell that her assailant was a young woman of a similar size and build. They were reluctant to use ninjutsu or genjutsu, but it was clear they were each kunoichi or had received some training at the least.

Sakura was stronger. Or maybe she was just that much more determined. She could feel the energy –the resolve– draining from the other girl, even as Sakura pushed through the white hot pain of the metal piercing into her own body. Her mouth was iron full, teeth slippery as she resisted clenching her jaw, and she thought the clip from the girl's elbow had most likely broken her nose. Her hands were wet with sweat or saliva or blood, and she kept tangling her hands in long strands of hair as she tried to choke the girl between her legs. Knocked her head back into the earth and tried to strangle her.

She might have done it, snapped the bone under her thumb and let the girl drown in herself, if her clone's dispersal hadn't knocked the breath from Sakura's lungs. The imagery hit her in a slam –snapped the air from her middle and she wanted to fold into herself. The pain in her shoulder, the split across her face dulled and she couldn't breathe.

She could smell the smoke, though. She tasted ash and burning flesh in her mouth –but it wasn't her mouth. It hadn't been but it was.

Sakura's limbs were shaking and not completely obedient but she crawled off her opponent and backed away. She had to go. She had to go.

The estate was aflame.

She grabbed the kunai still in her back and stuck it into the girl's leg, deep into her thigh and then Sakura ran.

It was another attack –like the one Yuzuho had spoken about and Sakura had ignored.

Another attack and Shoma was burning.

-o-

Akatsuki wouldn't be working with the Carbon Man any more. The Carbon Man was gone and so was half the population in his territories.

The raiding party had come in the night, stolen away children and cut down adults. Ransacked and burned property and stores. Any person with even a hint of affluence had been targeted first and neutralized. Ken posited that Sakura had been sought out by a sensor looking for significant chakra signals. To kill her or to take her, he didn't know, but he scolded her for not ending the girl in the forest.

Sakura didn't have anything to say in her defense. She wished she could return to the estate but her Captain didn't want to involve themselves in the affair any more. Not now, not when other villages would be coming to investigate. Their cell didn't need to hang around and she especially did not need to be seen by anyone.

It was another stained red path back to Konoha.

-o-

Konoha was bright with winter sun; it was a crisp and cloudless day.

Mission-failed report.

She hadn't been in attendance, but Ken had gone earlier that morning after they had gotten back to the village. Intelligence from other cells and sources told of Otogakure having been responsible for the raiding. Ken told her it was a card from Orochimaru's deck and apparently everyone knew this about the man save for Sakura.

Or at least they had been aware enough to suspect, but not Sakura. No one had shared as much with her.

Tsunade must have known...

Sakura could see her breath in the air. She would have thought the sight magical when she were younger, but it didn't stir anything in her just then. She just wanted the misty little cloud to disappear. She wanted the crowds on the street to quiet and to leave, for all the noise around her to stop. She settled for stumbling into an alley between buildings, into a forgotten place that eyes often overlooked.

The alley was full of steam from vents and her breath was lost in the mix. Restaurants and shops to either side of her, and she thought there must have been a residential home above that had a busted disposal; she could see scraps of food splattered and broken on the ground. She let her weak knees take her down to be with the discarded bits, felt the damp that always seemed to occupy alleys and backstreets.

Sakura clutched at the grooves in the brick wall with one hand as the other grabbed at her chest to twist the fabric of her shirt into a painful knot. It felt like an edge of glass prying through her skin. A little fissure she tried to stop with insistent pressure. It crumbled into grainy sobs. There was no bandage or wrap that could keep it together so she cried.

But she had cried over corpses before and it had never done any good, so she stopped. She put her fist to her mouth, bit on her dry skin and told herself it was enough.

Yuzuho. Shoma. Reina. All things past and gone.

But Otokagure – that village remained.

Sakura kept breathing. She was fine.

There was always another mission. There was always the mission and she could focus on that.

She was fine.

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-o-