Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
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His body went rigid at my voice, as if he wished I said the opposite instead. His foot shuffled across the ground and inch before it stopping moving completely. His face reading mine as the night conversed around us.
He nodded once, and then moved quickly through the trees. I followed him, keeping up with his pace. Vampires were fast, but hunters were trained to be just as fast. How were we going to kill something if we weren't able to catch it?
We traveled further and further away from the mountain, who knew how long we had until Gaara and his companion hunter caught up to us. I felt time's cool breath on my neck, and I pushed off the ground harder, willing my body to move faster, faster still. We had such little time, and I didn't want to waste any of it by slowing us down.
He veered left, breaking us through the brush and into a clearing. The grass here was tall and unruly, stretching up to the sky as high as they'd reach.
We walked straight through it, my hands tickled from the light touches of the grass blades. Sasuke made his way so confidently, following the lines of a map I could not see.
In the center of the field, he ducked to touch the ground. He brushed a bit of dirt aside to reveal a small handle. Yanking on it, he opened the ground up to reveal a staircase. The tall grass remained on top of the door, and would act as cover when the door would shut closed behind us.
I tested the first step, and then the second, and slowly made my way down into the pool of darkness. Sasuke wasn't far behind, but my adrenaline picked back up again when the hatch closed shut and left us in the complete dark. I couldn't see an inch in front of my face, so I opened myself up to my other senses.
There was a scratching sound to my left, and then a strike brought a small flame to life. Sasuke's face appeared in the dim glow, his eyes scanning the nearby wall for something.
I saw what he was looking for at the same time he had. We both reached for it and stopped short when we saw how close our hands were. He jerked his hand back, allowing me to grab hold of the torch.
The wood felt solid in my grasp, and I lifted it off its place on the wall to hold before him. He stuck the match to the clothed top and the light grew brighter from it. He gingerly took the torch from my hand and lead the way deeper into the tunnel.
If this was what a vampire's life always looked like, you could definitely count me out. I mean, I never would want to become one in the first place anyway, but to have a life be so filled with all these never ending halls and maze like abodes. How did they function like this?
He stopped short of a doorway, and looked back at me as he turned the handle. We walked inside and he ventured off a few steps to the left, leaning over and extending his arm to lay the torch down on a stone structure. The flames roared to life, licking away at a substance that stretched along the stonehenge lining the entire room. Within seconds, darkness was chased away to make way for the flickering light.
In the center of the room stood a stone pedestal, and in the middle of it was a slightly glowing orb. The dim red pulsed every few seconds, a dying light in and of itself.
Symbols littered the skin of the object, but I couldn't make out what they were exactly, what they meant. My feet carried me over without a thought, and my hand hovered just over the orb without touching it.
Warmth radiated from it.
"This is…" This was the thing that Gaara was looking for. The Sun bomb.
Sasuke walked around to the other side of the pedestal. When he came to a stop, he squared his shoulders to me, facing me head on. His gaze stuck on the orb, but somehow I knew his attention was on me, waiting to see how I'd react, the next thing I'd say to him.
"Can I touch it?"
The side of his mouth lifted in a husky laugh. "I'd prefer it if you didn't."
My hand retracted a bit, but my longing to hold the item was substantial.
"Why..." I took a step back, watching Sasuke warily. "Why did you take it?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't I take it?"
The way he said it shouldn't have surprised me, but I still couldn't believe his tone. Bitterness filtered through each of his breathes, the slight pauses he took between each word.
It was the first time I'd ever heard him speak to me in such a manner. And it surprised me that it took so long for it to occur. I found myself forgetting that he was indeed a vampire. A monster of the night.
Something I should fear.
His hands at his sides clenched tight. "It is a necessity."
"But what do you need it for?"
He lurked around, quickly coming up to a stop in front of me. His fingers wrapped around my wrists, holding me in place.
My eyes narrowed at the rough contact. "Let go!"
He gripped tighter.
"You don't understand what it's like to be a vampire," he seethed. "Slinking around in the dark year after year after year with no end in sight."
"If you find it so unbearable, why don't you just end it then?" I struggled to get out of his grasp, eventually wringing my wrists away from his hold. I stepped back a few feet, outside of his reach. "Why go on?"
His gaze was harsh, and yet thoughtful. I could practically see his thoughts flashing through his eyes, as if he were looking back on all his years as a monster.
"I used to be a hunter once, just like you."
My head bobbed up and down. "I know, I've read about you in my book." A flush sprang to my face, making my head feel warm with embarrassment. No need to say how often I read about him.
"You know who I am," he stated. "Then you must know why I am still alive."
He looked at me expectantly, trying to coax me into realizing the answer to my own question.
His story in my textbook was brief. All I knew was he was from a powerful family, his parents were killed, and he was also supposed to have been dead from the same incident.
"Itachi," my lips tingled from the name passing through them. "Your brother, he's still out there."
A snarl ripped from his throat and his lips stretched to expose his fangs. His eyes turned a vivid red, mixing exquisitely with the fire on the outskirts of the room.
I pulled the sword out of its sheath, angling it in front of me with both hands on the hilt. The sheath fell to the floor, and the sound of it hitting the stone reverberated around us.
It took him a few seconds to calm down, retract his fangs and allow his eyes to fade back to their normal dark hue.
He looked ruefully at the sword in my hands, taking a deep breath and letting it out through his nose. "I wasn't supposed to do that."
The sword stayed where it was, I didn't move it an inch.
"I will behave myself," he said quietly.
"Sorry, I feel like this weird dream is about to end, and I'm not taking any chances." My senses were firing at light speed, eyes scanning his movements, smelling the musty underground around us, listening to the fire cracking around the room.
That flash he'd shown me brought everything crashing down to perspective. What in the actual hell was I doing right now? Why had I allowed myself to be drawn in, to let him lead me down here in this underground room where no one would be able to find my dead body. My bones would turn to ash with the passage of time, and eventually no one would remember me.
"I'm going back to my team now," I said, slowly backing up towards the door. I let go of the sword with my left hand to reach down and grab the torch resting on the stone still. The wood was warm beneath my touch, the wood sending a sense of security through me. If need be, I'd snap the thing in half and be able to use it as a stake.
"Sakura, I didn't mean to frighten you." His words played at me, made me want to stay. It was like a dream, hearing that voice I'd played over and over in my head over the past decade or so. Maybe that's what it was, I got caught up in a dream. Thinking that I was safe with Sasuke because he was the voice in my memories was a falsehood. I was stupid for thinking anything about this was a good idea.
"If you care about me like I think you do," I started, cursing at myself silently when my voice wobbled at the end. "Then you won't come after me when I leave this room."
His hand reached out, as if to touch me. It hung in the air alone, beckoning me back to him.
This was what made them so dangerous. Vampires were already ferocious with their sharp teeth, superhuman strength, and then those special abilities held by few of their kind. But this, this pull they could unleash on their victims to make them feel...make me feel like I needed to be around him. What a horrible, terrible power.
I reached back and awkwardly maneuvered the handle with the same hand I held the torch in. When it pulled free, slowly swinging it into the room, I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Sasuke was still standing by the pedestal, he was as still as the stone itself.
That image of him burned into my mind, his eyes longing for something, forgiveness perhaps, and his hand still waiting in the air, beckoning me to return.
The memory of his voice on my neck played through, as if I was a little girl again. But I knew now that I didn't want this, I wished that I had never known who the voice belonged to. I wished I was left in the dark about it all.
I was leaving this place, and I was going to find my sister. I was going back to reality.
My boots echoed across the floor as I took off in a sprint in the direction we came. I reached the stairs quickly, taking them two at a time. I didn't allow myself to look back, afraid of shattering my escape attempt.
Pushing my shoulder against the rough hatched door made my shoulder ache, and it took a couple tries for me to get the thing open. Fresh air rushed at me, and I pushed on. The tall grass tickled the tops of my hands as I ran through them, the chit chit chit sound they made as my body parted them stuck in my ears.
Only when I made it past the grass did I dare to look back. My arms pumped, legs barreling me forward as I quickly glanced over my shoulder.
He was there, standing in the middle of the field. Though he wasn't making a move to come after me, it still made me nervous that he could reach me in a second if he changed his mind.
A guttural cry escaped me, and I hated myself for it. My body ached, bogged down with all the information I'd obtained in such a short amount of time.
A pond welled up from the trees to my left and I threw the torch in it, effectively concealing myself in the darkness. The bite of the sword's hilt caught my attention then, but I kept hold of it. The sword and hilt were all I had weapon-wise.
But, my run was short lived. Just in the next second, Sasuke appeared before me, his eyes set in a glare that I couldn't interpret, his mouth set in an angry way.
"Forgive me," he spoke before he took hold of me and carried me off.
I struggled against him, swinging the sword in his direction. He stumbled a bit when he had to let me go to bring his left arm up to block my attack. The blade bit into his skin and he let out a low hiss of pain.
He gave me a long look before his hand reached out and hit the back of my neck.
No!
I glared at him as my vision began to fade into nothingness once again.