My apologies for not updating sooner, but school has been taking up most of my free time, I'm sorry I hope this makes up for it!!!!
I'll submit the next one as soon as I can!
And, please check out my work on deviantart . com!!
-IF YOU LIKE ITACHIxSAKURA, OR DEIDARAxSAKURA OR SASORIxSAKURA, CHECK OUT MY GALLERY ON DA!!! (I'm JudgeGooby on there)
R&R please :)
They were, according to Kisame, making good time. It was for this reason that they had stopped early and made camp.
It had been two days since Sakura had woken with her head wrapped up like a mummy. The rain had stopped the next morning and travel became easier as both the road dried and her muscles became accustomed to the work.
Sakura chewed slowly at the course bread in her hand, gazing at nothing in particular. Kisame and Itachi were sitting near a ring of stone they had created to hold a fire. They ate very little, talking in low voices. Sitting a few feet away, also eating very little, was Zetsu.
He watched Sakura like she was a piece of meat and she snapped her head back, staring intently at her hands. 'creepy'
As the days passed and as the small group ninja moved slowly to a destination, at times Zetsu or Kisame would leave for hours on end, Sakura however, didn't know where. There destination, she had guessed was the Akatsuki headquarters. Sakura, being constantly drained of chakra from Kisame's sword called samahada, had the most trouble. Although Kisame had promised not to kill her, he had said nothing about not beating her. Often the slightest slip caused him to rebuke her with a physical attack of some sort. Cowed, she avoided messing up in his presence. It was easier said then done as he found any excuse to cause her harm.
Thus, the night Itachi and Zetsu left, leaving her in Kisame's care, brought a shiver of apprehension to Sakura. Even if she didn't trust Itachi or Zetsu, she trusted Kisame less. Without Itachi to cook dinner, Kisame untied Sakura and ordered her to do so while he hovered over her, cuffing her for any reason he chose. Tormenting the girl seemed to become a favorite pass-time for him.
The ingredients she had to choose from were few and Sakura settled for making a simple soup out of some of the barely remaining bread and a few chunks of stringy rabbit. It smelled delicious to her but she knew tasting the meal while it cooked would result in a very bad strike. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it as she stirred the soup to cook it evenly.
As she stirred, Sakura's mind wandered from her task. It had been a terrible few days since her capture. She wondered what Tsunade was doing about it and if Kakashi or Naruto were really looking for her. Tears slid unnoticed down her cheeks as she recalled her life training under Tsunades wing and working extended shifts at the hospital, for the days of healing the injured ninja that where rushed in everyday.
Her breath hitched in her throat as the image of Naruto returned to her mind. He would find her, surely. It had been almost two weeks, though, and Sakura was starting to lose hope in her situation. She imagined things getting progressively worse with no end in sight.
Kisame watched the pitiful creature cooking his food with distaste. At least whatever she was making smelled appetizing, even if she wasn't. Small, weak, the only thing she had going for herself was her looks. By ninja standards Sakura was fragile in appearance, with hair bright pink. A delicate, pointed face and slender body was appealing and rare for kunoichi's, who normally had bodies similar to grass cats, lithe with underlying muscle tone. His long dead sister, he mused, would have slaughtered to have a figure like this one's.
Kisame's face darkened when he heard the hitch in her breath and saw tears dripping down her face. "Knock it off," he growled at her. Startled, Sakura dropped the spoon and glanced his way. Reaching out, Kisame aimed a cuff at her. To his surprise, his hand met nothing. Sakura had ducked.
Instantly, she realized her response, which had been a automatic reflex, was a bad one. In a movement far too fast for Sakura to catch, Kisame had sprung from his seat and sent his fist into her side. Falling heavily, the young woman wheezed for breath as a sharp pain in her side started to spread across her body.
Before she could sit up and grovel to the obviously angry Akatsuki, he was on her.
Straddling her form, Kisame struck down at young girl, anger taking over any of his better judgments. As he had untied her to allow her to cook, Sakura tried to hold her hands up to stop him, shoving at his chest weakly and striking back in desperation. She was too weak and drained, though, and he was too strong. The beatings on his end came faster and more severe. Soon, Sakura barely registered his fists contacting with her body.
It took even longer for her to realize when it had stopped suddenly. Blinking blackened eyes, she gazed blurrily towards the form of Kisame laying a few feet away and a livid looking Uchiha Itachi speaking in harsh tones to his partner.
Itachi had returned moments before, only to see his partner beating Sakura to a pulp. He didn't know, nor did he really care, what has caused this sudden outburst from Kisame. He did know that it had to stop or Sakura would be dead.
Dropping the scrolls, Itachi easily pulled Kisame off the young woman and threw him to the ground.
"Have you lost your mind?" Itachi's face was cool and collected as always, but his voice betrayed him, and he kicked the man forcefully. "Do you want to get yourself killed? Do you want to see me strangled with my own intestines? Do you find joy in the fact that you're trying to kill my only chance of having my eyes healed? Are you really this stupid?" Each question was followed by a more severe kick until the Kisame was actually cringing away from the eldest Uchiha. "Look what you're foolishness has done."
Sakura's eyes were starting to swell shut with the bruising. She couldn't lift her arms, but she managed to turn her head to watch Itachi seize his own partner by his hair and with surprising ease and yank him to his feet.
A small, still conscious part of Sakura's mind laughed victoriously at seeing someone else finally being moved using their hair. She hoped viciously that it hurt Kisame as much as it hurt her.
"Look Kisame." Kisame was pulled by the hair until he looked down at Sakura, who groaned and attempted to roll away. She couldn't manage the movement and lay still, shivering. She wished she could understand what Itachi was saying to his partner, if only for the satisfaction it would give her.
She didn't care why the Uchiha was so angry. She was pretty sure it had something to do with the knowledge that killing her would result with someone seriously pissed off.
Sakura found her eyes no longer able to open and stopped trying. A few muscles in her body twitched of their own accord and she vaguely felt herself being lifted from the ground and held against a hard chest. The air, faint against her skin, spoke of movement. She was being taken somewhere.
"You'll stay out here tonight," Itachi said coolly to Kisame as he bore Sakura towards the tent.
Itachi watched Sakura sleep as he bandaged what he could of her wounds. He felt broken bones in her but did not give any sympathy as she groaned whenever he prodded a bad injury. Beaten as badly as she was, it was a surprise she was still alive. To think what another few minutes would have done if he hadn't have arrived when he did.
-Sometimes Kisame was a complete idiot.
Past basic first aid, Itachi knew little about healing. He was Akatsuki. He specialized in tracking and killing with stealth. Itachi was no medic nin though. She would be able to be moved in this condition until she had been healed. He had very little in the way of medicine, most of the bottles having already been consumed.
Digging in his rucksack, he wondered if he still had that vial Sasori had given him.
With a small smirk of satisfaction, the man pulled out a small bottle of green liquid. Holding Sakura's head in one hand, he uncorked the bottle with his teeth and tilted the contents down her throat.
With his fingers, Itachi prodded the areas where he had previously felt broken bones. The bone felt solid beneath his fingers. A few moments passed and it was obvious her bruising was dissipating. It would still take her a few days to be back to normal with injuries as bad as hers had been, but Sasori's concoction had sorted out all the dangerous breaks and healed them.
Itachi left the tent and announced to Kisame that they would be staying put for a couple days,
"Zetsu," he said emotionlessly, "will remain behind to watch Sakura. You," his crimson eyes flashed dangerously at Kisame, "Will not go within ten feet of her while I am gone." With that, the eldest Uchiha returned to the tent and settled down to watch his captive.
Unlike his partner, Itachi saw attractiveness in Sakura the moment she was thrown at his feet. His opinion of her features was similar to Kisame's, small and weak, but he did not find her as repulsive as Kisame had. Before she had given him a reason not to kill her, Itachi had felt what could have been a very, very small amount of pity at having ordered his partner to slice her head off. She was a pretty little thing, fragile and slender. It was hard to find a female ninja who looked so in need of protecting. Strangely enough, that appealed to him.
When he had returned with Zetsu, the last thing he had expected to see was Kisame pummelling Sakura. Something unknown to him had rising from the pits of Itachi's stomach upon seeing the spectacle. He was intent on killing Kisame where he stood if it meant keeping Sakura alive. That feeling had unnerved Itachi greatly and made him reconsider his motives for keeping the girl alive.
The handsome Uchiha ran slender fingers through his midnight black hair and continued to gaze down emotionessly at the young woman on his bedroll.
To say that Kisame was angry would be a grand understatement. It was one thing to be insulted by his partner. It happened often enough that comments about his inferior intellect rolled off him like water. It was an entirely different matter to be passed over in favour of what Kisame deemed a weak animal.
He was livid over Sakura's preferential treatment. He vowed to become even with the pitiful female who dared to cause his partner to behave so irrationally. Itachi often called him a fool but it was Kisame's opinion that the Uchiha was the one acting foolish. He just had to prove it to him.
'He looks a lot less hostile asleep,' Sakura mused silently. It had taken something close to fifteen minutes for the sore woman to sit up and survey her new surroundings. Waking up comfortable, unbound, and warm was befuddling until Sakura noticed Itachi sleeping on the bedroll next to her.
The first few moments of wakefulness had brought a deep sense of relief to her. She wasn't dead. That was a plus. On the other hand, she was still a prisoner, which brought a second flood of emotion to cover up the relief with disappointment. After sitting and noticing Itachi asleep, Sakura felt a third, stronger emotion.
Panic settled over her quickly as the urge to flee filled her veins and her adrenaline pumped wildly through her body. A quick motion with her leg brought a stab of pain that lanced through her, distracting from the fear. Sakura realized that running away was not going to be an option and would be insanely stupid. She chose, instead, to study her sleeping captor. There wasn't much else to look at in the tent anyway.
'He reminds me so much of Sasuke'
His face was lax and had changed his expression into a much softer set. He no longer looked harsh or, Sakura realized, scary. Itachi used scare-tactics but very little force on her. The few times he'd cuffed her were not very hard by comparison to Kisame. It was the shark man who was the extremely violent one of the pair. Itachi, on the other hand, hadn't used force with her since that first day. He was the silent, brooding type that devised plans before a fight. Which reminded her greatly of Shikimaru.
Sakura shuddered to think of what would happen if Itachi were really like Kisame. She would not have survived the first day.
Sakura looked more closely at young man asleep before her. 'You're not the bad one,' she told him silently, not wanting to actually speak aloud lest she wake him. 'You just- wait what the hell am I thinking? He is the bad one, he washed the Uchiha clan in blood! He murdered his own mother without a second glance he's the one that has made Sasuke suffer so much!!'
As she made these revelations, what could have been a ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Itachi's mouth. He was dreaming, she realized. A small voice in the back of her mind wondered what he dreamt. A smile of her own started to form as she watched his eyelids flicker in sleep. His face was so peaceful that Sakura could not help but lose sight of her predicament. Oddly enough, she felt at ease in the tent watching her captor doze.
A shadow flickered across his features and the eldest uchiha turned his head as though upset. A long strand of black fell across his features, obscuring the frown forming on his lips. Without thinking about her actions, Sakura reached forward.
His face felt smooth under her fingertips as she brushed the hair back behind his ear. The texture of his face surprised her. Her shocks continued as she found herself unable to draw her hand back, tracing the contour of his jaw lightly. This did not last long, however.
With a speed that proved his agility as a ninja, Itachi sprung into action. It was not often he was caught off guard while asleep and he'd be damned if whoever was touching him would get away. In one fluid movement, his hands had shot out to trap Sakura's wrists, his body rolling over to pin her back down. It wasn't until he was on top of her and heard her gasp of pain that he registered who had been touching him.
Sakura stared in muted horror at the eldest Uchiha above her. He had pounced on her so quickly that she couldn't resist. Not that she could have if she wanted to. Her wrists were pinned above her head and almost his entire weight bore down on her slight frame. Gasping, she fixed her eyes on his and waited for him to either let her go, or strike her. She half expected him to kill her for her uninvited touch. When he made no move at all, her fear was slowly replaced by confusion.
Itachi gazed down at the young woman beneath him, a very strange feeling coming over him. He felt something in his chest tighten. He watched in rapt fascination as her expression changed from terror to confusion.
...She looked so vulnerable lying there.
Ooooh!!! What's he gonna do??????!!!! You guys wont know until you review! mwahaha!