Diclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Beautiful Disaster

Chapter 3: Entropy

Scraping metal against solid stone rang nauseatingly in her ears. Something was being dragged along the stone floor outside her cell and the terrible scraping was making bile rise up in her throat. The sound contained a sure promise of pain. The echoes reverberating around the empty stone room seemed to be mocking her, screaming "They're coming to get you little kunoichi."

God, please let it just stop.

She couldn't see what it was, because she couldn't move her body to look. But this is how it always started. They were experts at the mindfuck. Yet she could easily tell they followed a very strict equation. Introduce a little stimulus teasingly, allowing the anxiety and fear build up. Then use that stimulus to cause pain, stop for a while, then inflict more extreme pain. Yesterday it had been water. She had been awoken by being dragged roughly across the floor and having her head forcefully plunged underwater. Then as the 'session' had continued she had been held under water for continuously longer periods of time, until she eventually passed out. Then she had been awoken to go through it all again. She had also had the pleasure of experiencing the same method with senbon, hot pokers, kunai, glass, electricity, and the surprisingly horrible sandpaper. Well at least they were predictable. But she wondered what they would do when they ran out of ideas. That is if those sadistic bastards ever ran out of ideas. They seemed quite content to drag this out for as long as possible, always ordering her wounds to be healed just enough to keep her alive for next session. She couldn't help but wonder when they would kill her.

And now someone was stalking around outside her cell teasing her with the promise of what sounded like a large and sharp steel object. But she couldn't quite turn to look. She had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor after yesterday's torture with her back to the bars and she hadn't been able to move her arms yet, much less lift her head. She had quickly learned the best way to deal with being in a state of constant pain was to remain as still as possible. Don't move, just breathe and wait for blissful unconsciousness or the chance to fight back. Though she knew fighting was pointless, the kunoichi in her couldn't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, one of the bastards would let his guard down around her still form and she would be able to take him out, cause him pain too.

The scraping sound ceased suddenly but was replaced by disturbingly loud rhythmic bangs, which probably meant he was running the object back and forth across the bars of her cell, trying more straightforwardly to get a rise out of her. But she was not a caged animal.. No, she wouldn't give into his provocation. She would just lie quietly and bide her time.

Suddenly a loud metallic snap followed by a creak and a rush of air signaled the cell door had been thrown open.

"Are you ready to have some more fun today, pretty little kunoichi," a low grating voice made her spine crawl. She could tell there were two of them by their footsteps and their contemptuous chuckles.

Suddenly a sharp pain in her back signaled she had been kicked in the kidneys. Sakura squeezed her eyes tight and bit back the painful gasp struggling to escape her throat. She hated to give them the pleasure she knew they got from her pain.

"Oi, you're a stubborn little bitch aren't you," one of the men whispered in her ear. His breath was wet and hot against her cheek and the sour smell made her want to gag.

'Remember your training. Don't say anything, don't provoke them,' Sakura thought. She wanted nothing more than to scream expletives at them, wanted to tell the bastards what they could go do, but she had been taught better. No matter how satisfying it would be to momentarily voice her spite, the punishment would be exponentially worse. She had been taught just to stay quiet. Be silent. Don't break.

Fingers ran deceivingly gently along her cheek. Sakura couldn't help but shrink away from the touch. That was the worst, when they would pretend to be kind. Because no matter how nice it seemed, it was not, it was just a precursor to the worst forms of torture. The absurdity of the relationship between pleasure and pain was constantly reinforced in this purgatory. The worst violations were always the ones that began with kindness.

Suddenly the hands laced into her hair and violently tugged upwards, dragging her up from lying on the ground to kneeling on her bruised and torn knees. She could feel her scalp stretching, her hair almost tearing from her head. The dense pain from the sudden movement shot through her joints. Her vision was washed over with red.

The man standing behind her yanked her hair once more as if to emphasize his control. She cursed her eyes for automatically reacting, sending stinging tears to roll over her face. 'So much for not showing any weakness,' she bitterly thought.

"Alright little kunoichi. Let's start from where we left off yesterday. Shall we." It wasn't a question. It was more like the promise of pain.

"What village sent you? What is your name?" The man in front asked her as he let a long and blunt metal dagger that had been resting on his shoulder fall towards the ground, the point resting dangerously in front of her knees.

Sakura noted the double questions and guessed he must be getting frustrated with her. Normally he followed a very strict protocol in his torture. Asking two questions at once was not efficient and could easily confuse a pain riddled mind and decrease the likelihood of getting the desired answers.

Sakura couldn't help but smirk at his unintentional show of weakness as she stared at his knees.

"Answer me" he snarled.

She couldn't help herself. She knew it was idiotic and it would bring pain swifter and stronger than if she just remained quiet, but she just couldn't deny herself this little act of defiance. She needed more than anything to feel as though she still had some semblance of control.

"Go fuck yourself."

The dagger in front of her was quickly raised and thrusted straight through her right shoulder with an angry grunt. The excruciating burning tore through her chest, down her arm, and up her neck and she couldn't suppress the tormented scream that fell from her lips along with drops of warm blood. For a moment she couldn't breathe, couldn't think as the waves ravaged her body, her nerves constantly firing and her brain flooded with chemical agony. Her screams echoed off the stone walls of the dungeon.

The man behind her gasped angrily and tugged hard as he stepped back away from the blade jutting out from the back of her shoulder.

"Oi! Watch what your doing. You almost got me with that!"

"Sorry" the other chuckled then bent down to catch Sakura's chin with the hand that wasn't holding the dagger. "So you still haven't learned your lesson little kunoichi? Well, we can fix that."

Ever so slowly he began pulling back on the impaling dagger. The bluntness of the worn edges creating excruciating friction and making her back arch with pain. This was a tool that got plenty of use.

Sakura resisted the urge to scream as the blade was pulled from her shoulder, inch by torturous inch. She could feel the edges of her consciousness go blurry and prayed that unconsciousness would take her soon. She knew it was too much to hope for death. The bastards knew enough not to give her a fatal wound, and one of them knew how to heal her enough to keep her alive. But the deep dark numbness of unconciousness was the perfect escape for her. 'Just wait. Don't break' she screamed in her head, as desperation threatened to take over.

The edge of the dagger was pulled all the way out and the man behind pushed her hard. As the ground rose up towards her, Sakura tried to move her arms to catch herself but found she was unable to control her unresponsive limbs. The stone floor crashed into her face and chest and knocked the air from her struggling lungs.

"Hmm," a smooth chuckle pierced the stale air and found its way to her pounding ears.

'Oh, freakin great, another one,' she thought to herself foggily.

"Is this the one you captured last month? "the voice asked. It was strangely gentile and polite and it occurred to Sakura how much it seemed out of place.

"Hai,"one of her torturers answered nervously. "But we haven't been able to get any information from her yet sir."

"Oh? Is that so?" the voice turned up at the end to convey amusement.

Sakura heard the familiar click and creak of the cell's door being opened, then confident footsteps approaching her prone form. She tried to make out the man's face but her vision was thickly clouded and she was on the edge of passing out from pain and blood loss.

"Umm… yes sir" the torturer answered back hesitatingly. "We have been trying to get her name and village, but she's pretty damn stubborn."

The smooth chuckle reverberated off the walls again as feet came to a stop directly in front of Sakura's face.

"Well hello there Haruno Sakura from Hidden Leaf. Its been quite a while," the new man addressed her politely as he looked down at her.

'Oh shit! He knows who I am? How could he…' Her mind screamed as Sakura jerked her head and tried to focus on the blurry face above her.

The man leaned in closer, sensing her inability to see who he was and his face suddenly snapped into focus.

"NO!" a desperate gasp flew from her mouth as Sakura immediately tried to recoil away from the man. 'God no, not him' her mind rang out in panic.

The chuckle sounded again, this time much more loud and sickening. "Well Sakura-san, it's lovely to see you again too."

"Sir?" one of the men questioned uncertainly.

"Continue the interrogation. Now that you know her name and hidden village find out how much she knows about us. This little one was the Hokage's apprentice, so we should be able to get plenty of information out of her."

"Hai."

"Please make sure you heal her, so she doesn't die. She's much too valuable."

"Yes, sir."

A short silence signaled that the man was staring thoughtfully down at her. "And don't touch this one. I'd like to save this cherry blossom for myself," he chuckled as he ran a finger over her check and down her neck.

Sakura heard his words, but was barely able to register the meaning as the pain and panic faded and her world turned to black.

Sakura woke suddenly from the dark deep sleep she had been trapped in. Her eyes instictively remained closed, her breath regulated and steady. She had learned very quickly not to give any physical signals that she had awoken. If they knew she was awake, it would just start all over sooner. No, it was better to just lie still until they forced her to move, though that force always involved a great deal of pain which would not subsist until she once again fell into the darkness of sleep or unconsciousness. So Sakura clung to the still moments between waking and torture and guarded them fervently. Anything to prolong the simple pleasure of being awake without being subjected to constant pain.

Sakura quickly evaluated her surroundings as much as she could without moving. She could tell she was lying in a bed and had a soft pillow under head. She didn't feel any immediate pain in her still body, nor was she cold or wet or noticeably bound. She felt warm and safe. An unfamiliar masculine smell filled her nose and wasn't entirely unpleasant. Actually in truth, the warmth and smell and soft feel of the sheets were thoroughly pleasant. But Sakura knew very well that pleasure could be just as much of a weapon as pain. Feelings of safety and comfort could easily be exploited and turned back on someone. The newness and nonthreatening nature of the surroundings made Sakura feel very wary because she had learned the hard way not to be fooled easily into thinking she was safe.

And of course another factor that made Sakura feel very nervous was the obvious presence of another person. She could hear the soft sound of slow steady breathing close to her ear. The breaths tickled her cheek and a strong arm was wrapped protectively around her waist. She could tell it was a man and his arm felt well muscled so he was possibly very strong.

Her breath hitched in her throat and her eyes squinted tighter, betraying her consciousness when the man sighed and tightened his grip on her waist. She had to immobilize him and get away as quickly as possible. The only problem was that she wasn't sure if there were others present in the room. If there were, they either hadn't noticed her altered breathing or were choosing not to act yet. But she could never tell what was going to happen with them, or rather with him. He seemed to love toying with her head, making her believe she was alone when she was being watched, exploiting her by giving her extreme pleasure to replace it by the most terrible pain. But nonetheless, she had to do something. Everything indicated that escape was possible and she didn't want to lay there and wait for the man with his arm around her to wake up again and do the inevitable.

She closed her eyes and tried to draw chakra to her hands and shins. She was happily surprised to discover that they hadn't inhibited it with poison this time. But it did seem strange. He never left her unbound without having her chakra either inhibited or drained. Her monstrous strength had been well known throughout the shinobi world, and he was very careful about not giving her a chance to use it for escape. But right now she was able to access her chakra completely and something felt off. Maybe its what they wanted her to do. Maybe it was just a trap. Maybe once she moved to attack he would be there to take her once again and do those horrible things to her, to take her hope and crush it again for his own sick pleasure.

But she had to do something. If anything, the least she could do would be to take out the man lying next to her. Squeeze the life out of him for doing what she had no memory, but no doubt, he had done to her the previous night.

The chakra drawn and focused in the areas necessary, Sakura threw her eyes open and deftly rolled over his sleeping body to pin the man down to the bed. She straddled his waist and used the chakra in her legs to trap his torso against the bed. Her hands quickly flew to his neck and began to squeeze furiously trying to crush his windpipe. Her hair around her face and the wild look in her eye made her look ferocious and mad.

She ground her teeth and focused on squeezing the life out of the man beneath her. She didn't look into his face. She never looked into their faces. They weren't humans to her and to look into the eyes of the person doing the things that they did to her only made her more frightened. If she pretended they were monsters and not people then she didn't feel so alone and hopeless. None of them noticed except him, then he would find some way to use this against her, to force her to look into his eyes while he raped her or carved long slashes into her skin or told her about the way he had killed her precious people with his bare hands. But right now it was best to just dispatch with this particular man's life as quickly as possible and then move onto the next. Sakura could feel the man trying to buck his hips underneath her. She squeezed her legs together, trying to crush his hips with her thighs. Wet choking sounds were coming from his mouth as he tried in vain to draw in breath.

Suddenly a hand flew up to wrap around the wrist of the hands holding man's throat and attempted to pry her fingers away. But she didn't let up, struggle as he would, she was resolved and he was going to die.

And then another hand slowly rose up and cupped her cheek, gently stroking away tears she didn't know had been falling with the rough pad of his thumb.

The gentleness made her stop in shock. Her eyes shot open and darted onto the face of the man beneath her. They widened in disbelief as she looked into the mismatched eyes and masked face of Kakashi, pleadingly willing her to stop.

Sakura gasped and threw herself backwards off him and the bed. She scurried backwards across the room until her back slammed against the opposite wall.

Kakashi shot up in the bed and coughed violently, attempting to fill his deprived lungs with air. She watched his chest and back heave, shocked and confused. 'Kakashi. What…..' And then suddenly the memory of the previous night found her. She remembered the fight in the alleyway, the spiteful words thrown back and forth between the men. The words 'she's different' and 'damaged goods' rang in her ears and suddenly she felt sick to her stomach.

Kakashi looked at the frightened girl across the room. He could tell she was shocked, that she didn't know where she was. He wished his damned lungs would stop seizing up on him so he could tell her that everything was fine.

How had he let this happen in the first place? Why had he let his guard down? Something about the presence of Sakura made him behave so out of character. Last night he had brought her home, to his home! Though he wasn't actually sure where she lived he knew he probably could have taken her to Nauto's. But for some reason he wanted to take care of her himself. And when he had layed her in his bed, her body looked so weak and frail that he couldn't fight the need to hold her and soothe away the cold with his arms wrapped around her soft form. Maybe he was more intoxicated than he thought lost night. But it had felt so nice to fall asleep with her in his arms. He felt like he was finally protecting her, finally affecting her in a way that didn't cause pain or disappointment. But judging from her reaction, he realized that he was once again very wrong.

They were both paying for his stupidity now. His windpipe had almost been crushed by her chakra enhanced grip. She had obviously woken up thinking that she was in a dangerous place, that she had to fight him to get away. And now she was standing there across the room, surprise and anger reading across her tear moistened face.

"Sakura…." He reached out his hand towards her, not quite sure if he wanted her to come closer or to just stay put.

In an instant her face hardened, turned into a stoic mask. She looked at him for a moment with an expression in her eyes he could not read. The tension in the room felt stifling.

And the next moment she was throwing open the window and leaping out into the morning. Leaving Kakashi to stare at the empty spot where she had just stood.

She was gone.