Sasuke's head hurt. He tried to lift his hand to his head but he couldn't. Why couldn't he, he thought. Eyes, I need to open my eyes. Damn, what was that? He looked down at his arms, they were tied? Sakura, his head snapped up. Ow. 'Sakura?"
Sasuke looked around the room as much as he was able, he saw her lying on the bed in a wedding dress. "Sakura!" he called out to her but she didn't move.
He could see that she wasn't tied up. They seemed to be in a big house or possibly a mansion. The decorations were old, ornate, expensive and unfamiliar. Sasuke looked out the only window in the room, it was multi paneled and reinforced glass, which was common for homes in...Suna.
"Shit." Sasuke started to pull on his restraints. His neck was tied back he couldn't move much. He felt a rope around his middle, he was tied to the back of the chair? His feet were obviously tied to the chair's legs. Damn. Think Sasuke think. "Sakura!" He shouted at her. She wasn't tied up, maybe she could untie him.
He heard footsteps approaching the door to the room, he tried to twist around to look at the door but couldn't. He heard the door open and shut, slow relaxed footsteps came up behind the chair he was tied to, "Good evening Uchiha." the low bored voice of Akasuna no Sasori drawled by his head.
"You, you fucker, let her go, my family is coming, she is my brother's intended, you have no idea what's coming for you," Sasuke said with more confidence than he felt.
"Let them come. We are in Suna, this is my land. Besides, I doubt they even know where to start looking." Sasori walked over to the bed and sat down beside Sakura.
"So beautiful, is she not? You dated for three years if my sources are correct, didn't you?" Sasori wasn't looking at Sasuke, he was running his fingers through Sakura's hair almost purring.
"If you hurt her if you do anything to her, you're dead, I'll kill you." Sasuke's cool was rapidly leaving him, he knew he needed to calm down, to think straight. He couldn't.
"Hurt her, no, I have no such design, I love her, here she will finally get the love and affection she deserves. You didn't appreciate her when you had her, you are a fool. You never saw her, not like I see her. She is a work of art, a living work of art. She is perfect for me." He leaned over her sleeping form and ran his lips over hers, brushing across them barely touching, his tongue flicked out across her bottom lip, she stirred and then settled as he leaned back and away from her again.
"Don't fucking touch her!" Sasuke was struggling against his restraints, the ropes cutting into his flesh.
"She will wake soon enough, and when she does," Sasori picks up the delicate vial of clear liquid from the nightstand, "you will get to see first hand what true art really is, it's love. I will show you what you missed, what you will never have, what was never yours. You have no idea how long I have waited for her and I am not a patient man. She is mine and no one will take her from me again." He set the vial back down on the nightstand got off the bed and walked out the door.
Sasuke's yelling could be heard all the way down the hallway and throughout the house but Sakura lay sleeping and never stirred.
6 Hours ago back in Konoha….
"My team and I are going to get Sakura back, Kisame, Hidan and Deidara have read the files on Sasori, his recent murders, his family's past and my own private investigations. We have an address that he used for his registration, Shisui and a squad are heading there now and will check back with me in no less than 3 hours. Kisame, Hidan and I are headed to Suna where I believe he has taken up residence in his old family home. My sources tell me there has been recent activity there that had been absent in the last decade. We leave within the hour." Itachi briefed Madara and Fugaku in the main house of the current Uchiha compound.
"You will need a backup, we will send two squads to Suna with you." Fugaku began but was cut off by Madara.
"No, they won't make it through the desert. Akasuna knows that, which is why he chose the desert. Itachi is right a four man squad on foot is best." Madara nodded to Itachi.
"But that will take them days! That's when they get to the border, it will take 3 days to cross the desert if they go non stop, 5 if they take breaks! She could be dead by then, and if not her Sasuke!" Fugaku protested.
"You still don't understand do you father...Sasori of the Red Sand will not kill her. He thinks he is in love with her. An obsession, no doubt, but he still thinks he is in love with her, he will want to win her over. He is intelligent enough in his insanity to know he can not force her to love him. He kidnapped her to woo her. He will not kill her, yet." Itachi spoke in a controlled professional manner.
"The boy is right, but we still need to move, which is why Itachi and his team will move first, we will send two squads to tail them at a great distance, they will be back up but are not to follow close and not to engage." Madara inclined his head to Itachi at the other's nod.
"What if you are wrong Itachi, what if they aren't in Suna?" Fugaku asks his eldest.
"They are in Suna. I am positive." Itachi says. "If that is all, I will go, my team leaves within the hour." Both men nod to him and he turns and walks out the door. Sakura, please wait for me, don't do anything stupid, I'm coming for you, I promised you, I will come for you. He closed his eyes and chanted this in his head as he walked out of the main house and head to the old compound.
1 hour later at Sasori's studio apartment in the next town over…..
Shisui grimaced as he looked at the wall with picture after picture of Sakura. Pictures of her reading by a tree on her college campus, pictures of her in her apartment feeding her cat, pictures of her face, her hands, her legs. Shisui felt sick to his stomach. He had seen many disgusting horrifying things in his line of work, but war is different, espionage and assassination is different...this was personal.
"Sir, we found something you might want to look at." One of his men told him and handed him a thick file.
Shisui opened it and almost dropped it. With wide eyes, he turned page after page, sifted through file after file of Sakura's medical records, her report cards, pictures of her since she was 5 years old, pictures of her at age 8, 10, 14, it was her life in a folder.
"Sir." another member of his squad was holding a box. Shisui took it and opened it, there were little clay figures in it. Drawings. Paintings. Notes to friends, all done by Sakura through the years. The more Shisui looked the more sick he felt. He pulled out his phone and called Itachi.
"Itachi, I'm at the address you gave me. It is worse, so much worse than we thought. He has been following her for years since she was 5 years old from the records and pictures we have found so far. He has her whole life in folders and boxes, he has been stalking her for the last fourteen or fifteen years." Shisui told him.
"Shit. Stay there, I'm coming." Itachi hung up the phone.
"Change of plans, we are making another stop before Suna," Itachi told his platoon. He grit his teeth. How did this escape his notice, if anything happened to her, he would never forgive himself. He spun the SUV around and headed for the studio apartment where Shisui and his squad were. He needed to tell Madara. He flipped his phone open and made the call.
Shisui was waiting for him by the door when they arrived. Itachi followed him into the studio and ignored the walls for the folder and box that was spread out in front of him.
"How is this possible cousin, Sasori is only a few years older than her, he is our age, he would have had to have been nine or ten when he started following her, even for a genius, I can't see him being able to do such a thing." Shisui's brow was furrowed with concern and confusion.
"Akasuna no Sasori is not as young as he may look, but I don't have time to go into that right now.' Itachi said as he flipped pages over from the folder and sorted through items in the box."He is, however, a genius." Itachi was now examining a clay sculpture Sakura had made when she was 8.
"She used to complain to Sasuke and Naruto, she would cry that someone had stolen her artwork, that it was missing and she couldn't find it. She used to get grounded because she didn't bring home her report cards, or get in trouble when her homework projects went missing." Itachi held up a book report from her 8th-grade writing class.
"Her fingerprints are embedded in the clay." Itachi turned over the clay sculpture he had been looking at before. "The bastard has been tracking her, her whole life. In these pictures, she was 13 sleeping in her bed. This picture wasn't taken from a window or outside. He was in her room, you can tell he is leaning on her dresser." He picked up another picture of Sakura at 18, just last year.
"This is her moving into her apartment, right before her semester started. Hand me the records of this studio's lease." He tells Kisame and a few papers are put into his hands, he scans them,
"He took a lease on this apartment two days before her. He knew she was going to move here and he wanted to be close to her."
"That's fucked up yeah," Deidara said.
"Yea." agreed Kisame.
"Well, what are we waiting for, let's go kill the fucker." Hidan didn't understand why they were just standing around but he knew Itachi was thinking and would have a plan soon, he always did.
Itachi put the papers down on the table and walked over to the wall. He scanned over all the pictures of Sakura and his eyes froze. He plucked a picture off the wall. It was him and Sakura, they were in her house in Konoha, it had been taken only a few days ago. She was watching him make dinner, there was a look of trust and longing in her eyes but also...desire. Itachi flips the picture over and it read: She will look at me like this, soon, and the Uchiha will all be forgotten, all of them will be dead to her, not even a memory.
Itachi walked to the other wall, picture still in hand. "Shisui have you looked on the back of the pictures?"
"No, not yet we were looking through the box and folders and seeing if there were any other similar things hidden around the place," he answered.
"Madara and my father will be here soon, I want you to stay and look through everything. Call me if you find anything new. I have to get to her as quickly as possible. Akasuna are known for their unprecedented knowledge of poisons and elixirs...he said soon she would forget all the Uchiha...I don't think he means after time she will forget because he is going to try to kill all of us. I think he is going to try to erase her memory." Itachi looked one more time at the picture in his hand, folded it and put it in his pocket.
"I'm not going to let him do that to her. Let's move." He called to his platoon, and they left.