Pompeii
Chapter 39
Vesper Chan

Sakura stepped aside, lips shut like a pretty straight line as she gestured with her hand to the door before her. She turned and headed inside before he could move, not waiting for him to catch up with her and follow her inside. She knew he would. He wasn't far behind her anyway, stuck to her like a shadow at twilight.

Sakura glanced behind her and saw the Senju peeling the long trench coat off and folding it over one arm while glancing about, possibly searching for a coatrack. There was one in the corner, but he didn't move to hang his coat there and Sakura didn't offer to take it for him.

"I have a small office in the back if you think we need it," Sakura said.

"Are there windows where those birds can watch you?"

Sakura considered the question before her eyes traveled to the nearest window. Outside on a tree branch across the road and further than before, a pair of black birds perched. It was nothing in comparison to what it once was, meaning the Uchiha were either truly shedding their interest in her or becoming more sneaky about it. She hadn't seen any birds from Itachi ever since the incident where she broke her wrist. That seemed so long ago now.

"You can see for yourself," Sakura said, suddenly realizing she was in no mood to humor anyone anymore, much less Tobirama and his brother. The whole idea of the Senju was pissing her off lately.

That sentiment only flared when she saw him stopping by the stairs that led up and glaring at the second floor. His nostrils flared like he could smell something and his knuckles turned white as he bunched them at his side. She could guess what he was sensing or smelling and it didn't make her any more hospitable.

"He's not here right now, if he's who you were looking for," Sakura sighed, eyes sliding off to the side, refusing to meet his.

"I wasn't-" Tobirama stopped himself and swallowed. When he spoke again his voice had more depth to it, making it sound more official. "I'm not here to see anyone but you. I'm glad I was able to talk with you like this, without interruption."

Sakura wasn't sure that if Yamato had been in the building she would be speaking with Tobirama so easily. She could already imagine the standoff.

From the stories he told her, and what Sakura heard from Yamato, the younger brother was worse than the older brother when it came to vicious attitudes. Hashirama did more to command and control Yamato, but Tobirama had deep racists veins all through him. Tobirama was more of an elitist than his brother because 'that made sense.'

Yamato told her other things, things that made it hard to stand being in the same room as Tobirama. He wasn't like her and didn't see the world the same way, but that was no excuse to act and behave the way he had in the stories.

"I can't promise we won't be interrupted, but my office is pretty private. We're closed today, but emergencies keep their own hours, so I can be called away at a moment's notice."

Sakura laid her hand on the door and pushed it open before stepping aside to let him pass. He nodded his head in her direction, almost smiling before slipping past her.

"Can I offer you anything, tea, coffee, water?"

"No need. I am sated, but thank you."

Sakura nodded, taking the mug on the end of her desk and holding it under the water tank to fill it up. "As you wish. Now, I've already guessed this isn't a medical visit. What can I help you with?"

"How are you feeling?"

Sakura felt put off by his question. He asked her that like they were old friends catching up. He sounded so soft and kind, it made her skin crawl, but not for the usual reasons.

"I'm fine, did you come here just to ask that?"

"No, of course not. But, I have been concerned about you recently and wished to ascertain your state of well being for myself. I am glad you are doing well given the circumstances."

"Given the circumstances?" Sakura echoed. "What do you mean by that?"

"Many of the people in Pompeii have not been well. Doctors often catch with the things they try to heal. You treated young Naruto several times before his collapse, did you not?" he asked.

It didn't feel like a question when he phrased it.

"That's something you would know," Sakura huffed, leaning back in her seat and drinking the cold water from her mug, not caring how it didn't seem to fit. She would need to stay hydrated to just put up with his bullshit.

"The Senju is very close with the Uzumaki family, as we are distant relatives. We are also neighbors."

"You're also agents." Sakura inclined her head to punctuate her point.

"Yes, we are also agents charged with safeguarding our home. You can understand that."

Sakura let her eyes shut. "Yes, I can understand that. I even understand how you work so well with the Uchiha to get ahead of matters like Orochimaru. Good job on that front."

"Thank you."

Sakura hid her souring smile in her mug, hating how her sarcastic comment didn't register with the Senju fae. Maybe it was better he didn't recognize how she was sassing him to his face. She needed to be better about controlling her emotions lest she fall back into that biting asshole of a person she knew she could be when she ran out her last fuse.

She drank her water and he swallowed before speaking.

"How have your living arrangements been agreeing with you?"

Sakura set the now empty mug down and the weight of it made a sound that served just as well as an answer for him. "I'm not sure you came all this way to talk to me about my new neighbors. What are you doing here? Let's not waste anymore time on small talk. I can't stand it anymore."

"You're upset."

"Brilliant deduction. That all you came to see?"

"What have you been doing in the forests?"

Sakura waved her hand next to her head. "Walking, hiking, exploring. You tell me, you creep around and watch me the most. What am i doing out there that has you so spooked? I can't tell anymore. You said you had some questions."
"I wanted to also ask you why you're not sick."

"I don't know that either. There's nothing more I can see to these allergies but I know there's more to it, I just can't tell what."

He nodded. "And your immunity…."

"What do you mean immunity?" Her voice was almost snappy.

"How many citizens do you believe have displayed symptoms?"

"I've treated a couple dozen." Sakura narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

Tobirama folded his fingers and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Nearly one third have displayed serious to mild symptoms as of this morning. Last week it was a little over one fourth, but it's a situation that's been rapidly compounding. We do not know how to help these people other than discover the source and purify it."

"Purify?" She didn't like the word when he said it like that. It came out of his mouth sounding like a threat. "What the hell does that mean?"

He blinked at her, a slow steady gesture that made her feel stripped bare. She felt like he had done more than seen her in nakedness, but rather flayed her skin and peeled it back to expose all the inner workings of her body and soul...every dark and rotted corner of it. Like an eternal creature full of majesty and grace, he sized her up, and found her wanting.

"It means the situation is serious."

His voice was so suddenly cold.

"Then you think there is a source to this, like a strain or a nexus that can easily be eradicated? Plagues don't work like that. Diseases don't stop or end when you kill the first carrier rat, they exist outside of their mother source." Any doctor would know that.

"I see. You would know."

Sakura clicked her tongue and tapped her fingers to the edge of the desk. "Yeah, I would. I'm the doctor, remember?"

He tilted his head, observing her. "Yet you haven't been able to help a single soul, remember?"

It stung. Maybe in the past few months as the allergies morphed into something more serious, her usefulness diminished in the wake of her inadequacies as a doctor, but she hadn't been completely useless for the whole year. She had done some good. She had been good. She had, she had, she had !

"Is this what you came here to do?" Sakura asked, hating how her lips curled. "You came here to lay this at my feet and blame me? That's why no one is coming anymore. I'm not stupid, I know what they're saying. I get it. I'm the outsider in the town where doctors have always been bad news. I get it."

Her laugh was wet but she didn't let it show in her eyes.

"Tell me you didn't do this."

"I didn't do this!" Sakura all but snarled. "Of course not."

He didn't move, didn't even twitch as he spoke. "Then prove it."

"I can't. I-I'm trying to help. I'm trying to be helpful in this place.I didn't want to see anyone get hurt. If I could wipe away everyone's sickness I would. I'm trying. I'm doing what I can."

"You're colluding with vagabonds, villains, and traitors in your free time." He flipped some photos onto her desk, taken from a distance. The one at the top of the messy stack was of her with Yamato, smiling on the sidewalk and doing nothing more incriminating than that, but the others were of her leaving with supplies, walking into the forest, climbing the watchtower, and so on. None of it was damning, but Sakura could see how this would strike someone from the elite circles.

"What were you doing talking with these people?" He pointed to a photo of her with dosu.

"I was helping them. No one else would."

"There is a reason for that. We know who are friends are and we know who our enemies are. Which are you, Sakura?"

Sakura felt heat in her heart and in her face. She stood slowly.

"Am I being charged with something?" she asked, tone steely.

Tobirama stood to match her. "Not at this moment. I would like you to come forward with any information you might have that might shed more light on the matter. Charges can be dealt later, but what is most pressing right now is helping the citizens. Naruto has only regained consciousness a handful of times but remains nearly comatose. He muttered your name once. Was he calling for you or was he identifying his attacker?"

Sakura wished she could land her fist in his face and watch it implode from the force of the blow. She wanted to see him clutching a broken nose and looking surprised. She wanted to see him hurt and change that damn expression. He watched her with unwavering fae eyes that made her skin shiver and her blood boil.

"If you're done here you can leave."

"Where will you be going?" he asked, sounding like it was his business.

"You don't need to ask if you're going to spy and sneak around anyway, do you? Why would I bother telling anything to you. You're just like Yamato said you were."

It was the first sign of his composure crumbling. There was a reaction in his eyes and a shift in his posture. He leaned into her and his brows raised a fraction for a new expression she wasn't used to seeing on his face. He was one of the least expressive people she ever met, but she could tell that Yamato's name meant something to him.

"He doesn't know a damn thing about me," Tobirama said, sounding like he was trying to convince her.

"He said you would say that too. You'd say something about how he could never comprehend you because the differences were so great. Whatever. You know it's not me doing this, but you're here harassing me and asking me stupid pointless questions that just make me feel sick. Get out and find the real answer to this problem." Sakura waved her hand between them, motioning for distance.

"You're only incriminating yourself by choosing him. I could have helped you if you came to me. You never said anything about yourself so what else can I do but ask questions. You've never shared with anyone else what you are, have you?"

It wasn't appropriate when Itachi said it and it sure as hell wasn't appropriate when he asked it too. She wanted to kick him between the legs, watch him double over, and driver her elbow into his back. She wanted to see him crumple. She wanted to see his filthy mouth fill with blood and broken teeth. How dare he!

"What I am is no one's damn business. I'm Sakura. I'm the damn doctor. That's it, now get out of my clinic!"

"Failing to come forward only incriminates yourself further." He grabbed his coat and turned one leg to the side, getting ready to move.

"You wanna search my place then get a warrant."

"Escalating things to that point would not be wise. It would be best if you gave you freely and of your own will. I could help you if you came forward."

"I've got nothing to come forward with. Leave me and Yamato alone. He's done with you and so am I."

And she saw it. She saw the hurt there, real and honest and true and more clear than anything she's ever seen on Tobirama Senju's face. But it was gone in a flash, and so was he.

If this is what feelings felt like he didn't want it.

With each step down the front stairs he could feel the echo jarring his heart, like the cavity in his chest was scraped clean and left empty, raw and bleeding from the butchery that left him void. He could hear his breath in his ears like it rattled his bones that much louder.

Damn

Damn

Damn

He saw her face in his mind and all the different flushes of anger that he was responsible for. He had put those tears behind her lashes there. He had made her lips curl and he had made her teeth bare at him with angry words.

But it wasn't his fault. He had been trying to help her. She didn't know better, she couldn't. It was clear she was tied to the events, and it was highly likely she was the very cause of the ill in the population, but he wanted to believe that it was something she couldn't help, or something she did without thought.

He was there for that. He was there to save her, but she spurred him. He had meant to be that mythic shining knight in armor so bold it made all the stories come true. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. She wasn't supposed to get angry at him like this. She was supposed to thank him, come clean with everything, and….and...and…

He stopped as something painful tore his heart open. He lurched on the last few steps and clutched his heart. Was it bleeding, was it ripped, was it torn? He gasped, looking up to the sky and seeing all the usual colors while the pain ebbed away.

The thought of her in his arms made him hurt. She wasn't something to be taken likely, whatever she was. The dream of her was enough to wound. He needed to get back and speak with his brother. Harashima needed to be briefed on the events.

Tobirama stepped down onto the sidewalk and turned down to where his car had been parked. He reached in his pocket for the keys, feeling the cold of the metal and thanking the ancestors for the normalcy of it. Metal singed his fingers, but he needed that reality. He was in need of grounding if she had undone him this much.

Sly vixen.

He slipped into the driver's seat and started the car. There was no one else on the road so it shouldn't have been an issue to cut the wheel and pull out onto the street, but there was a horrible snapping and straining sound. The wheel refused to move more than an inch and in the next moment the car was lurched forward, trunk end extened up in the air half a food. He heard more straining metal as she reached for the seatbelt and flashed out of his car with speed. He crouched and readied his screeching magic when he saw who was on the sidewalk.

All the pain came back tenfold, but this time it was burning as anger.

"You," Tobirama hissed, lip curling in disgust. He burned for the fact that he was barred from flaying the creature in front of his, limb from limb, flesh from fleshy patch. He wanted to see him undone like a fish.

"You," Yamato hissed back, just as nasty and dismissive with his tone. The roots curling out of the ground surged a little more and then halted, keeping the car in place.

"Are you finally here to bite, curr?"

"Don't think I wouldn't if I thought for one second you were a credible threat to her."

Yamato's eyes flashed with some dark and terrible power that was known and unknown. It was a power that went into the dark under the mountain, and came back with a little bit of the darkness. The roots groaned but didn't move. Tobirama suspected there were other roots run wide and far beneath the asphalt and sidewalk, ready to destroy their whole city if the reject thought it would be what Sakura wanted.

It wasn't fair that he slept mere feet from her and shared the same space with her. It wasn't fair he saw her daily when Tobirama was lucky if he…

"You're not good. The fact you're here now only incriminates her further. That what you want, or is that how things go these day? Is she like you, something stolen and unnatural? Is that why no one knows?"

"You better not have made her cry. I'll kill you."

"Is that a threat? It doesn't look good for her or you, now."

"I don't threaten. I kill in the dark and I make promises."

His lip curled once more. The sight was enough to make Tobirama's stomach churn, but something else made his gut a loose storm. "Sounds like a threat to me. Look how the filth barks, that's new." Tobirama lifted one hand. "You want to be put down and do this town a favor?"

The theory on the roots was sound as the ground was torn open and the power that made Hashirama feared as a god among the fae surged on bursts of red colored anger.

Tobirama made himself lightning, and when he stuck out with the white lightning, there was the imprint of a stag behind him, surviving in the shadow of the flash and then fading in the next nano second. He wasn't going to hold back this time.

Neither did Yamato.

They were at each other's throats and he could taste the burn in the air as well as the burn of wood from where lightning seared it bald.
"You," Yamato hissed, cheeks filling with hot breath as angry as his eyes. "You don't get to talk to her. You don't get to look at her. You're a racist piece of shit and I'll never let you touch her."

"She's hiding something," Tobirama challenged.

"That's her right."

"Not here, not now. We have bodies."
Yamato pushed forward and they struggled. His eyes were wide and black like the underside of the earth he was born in. "I don't care."

"You're evil," Tobirama barked. "You're dirty and not worth anything!"

"She doesn't think that and if she's the only one it's more than enough."

Yamato pulled up the roots between them and Tobirama disengaged. With distance separating them Yamato let the roots sink away out of sight once more, leaving scars in the earth. The street still smelled like battle.

Yamato pointed like his finger was filled with power, and it likely was. "Come back here and I'll kill you. That's a promise."