Scarlet Scroll
In the Cold I'm Standing
It was raining that night, but it hadn't dampened the mood on the streets. Through the open window, Kakashi looked down at the dripping lights and lanterns and watched the gaudily dressed women grouping themselves beneath colourful parasols, laughing and beckoning to the men who passed by. A soft orange glow spilled out of the brothel opposite, its windows and doors lit up like a pumpkin - plenty of customers were gathering close, attracted by the warmth of the light and the pleasure the women promised.
It wasn't the only brothel in Otafuku Gai. A few hundred yards up the street there was another. And another after that. In fact, this town was nothing more than a series of brothels connected by an endless chain of pubs, gambling halls, and cheap love hotels. It was the centre of nightlife and adult entertainment for all the five nations, and every night on every street there was always a party. Music was everywhere. From the brothel sang a light airy song of seduction, and in the bar two buildings away he heard the dull thud of a repetitive bassline. It would play all through the night until morning, as it always did, but then no one ever came to Otafuku Gai to sleep.
"Oh, there he goes."
Kakashi resisted glancing over to the other side of the room where two men sat beside a second open window. Out of this window pointed a bulky black camera, the film of which had been used up days ago, and was now only good to zoom in and spy through the windows of other hotels. Both men had their eyes glued to its eyepiece, swapping it between them with guffaws.
"You've got to see this, Sempai, he's really going for it now," one of them said, chuckling dirtily.
Kakashi feigned a yawn and propped his chin on his palm. Instead of accepting the invitation to look through the camera, he kept his eyes roving the street below, barely taking anything in. A man was throwing up in an alley some distance away, and a little nearer, another man was being pushed out of a doorway, presumably because he was out of money. Just little disharmonious nuances in a scene full of merriment and lasciviousness. Movement in a window directly facing his own made him glance across. A woman was peering out of an upstairs room in the brothel to look at the rain. She saw Kakashi too and smiled. Leaning forward to show her ample cleavage, she crooked a finger at him, silently inviting him to come over, get to know her and her price.
He stared through her, touching the charm hung around his neck before resolutely reaching out to slide the wooden shutter of the window back into place. His view of the prostitute and the street blocked, his gaze had nowhere to wander but around this dingy little hotel room that smelled of old tea and mould. Rather than risk glancing over at the men and the monitor they were panting at, he settled for closing his eyes and trying to think of home.
"Go on, spank that little slut."
"Look at her face, she's loving this."
A deep laugh. "Ouch, that had to hurt. I wish we had more film for this thing."
"Zoom in, zoom in. I want to see those little titties bounce."
Kakashi lifted his head away from the wall. "Jin, Ari," his acerbic tone cut right through the perverted whisperings and sniggers of the two men, "she's your teammate."
They just looked at him, clearly wondering how this was relevant to anything. "Our teammate finished hours ago," Jin said. "There is, however, a nice looking blonde three floors below her who seems to like the reverse cowgirl."
"If Sakura finished, why isn't she back yet?" Kakashi stood and stalked across the room to snatch the camera off its tripod, regardless of the two Root nin's protests. He snapped the lens into focus on the window of their target's room. All was dark.
"Who knows? They're lovers. Lovers sleep together." Ari pointed out the window. "Can you see the blonde yet?"
Kakashi all but threw the camera into Ari's lap, retreating back to his side of the room. It wouldn't be the first time Sakura had spent the whole night with their target, but it always made him nervous. The less time she spent in the company of one of the fiercest fights in the lightning country was another year rescued from being shaved off Kakashi's life expectancy with worry.
Jin turned to Ari with a roll of the eyes. "He's just being a killjoy because he 's been in Otafuku Gai for three weeks and he still hasn't been able to get any."
What was the point even engaging with these men? He might as well have been talking to gorillas. Kakashi sighed and let his head drop back against the wall. Let them keep surreptitiously squeezing themselves through their pants together. If their teammate found out...? Well, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. She needed to believe that she could at least trust her teammates to be professional when keeping surveillance for her safety, and even though it wasn't true, Kakashi didn't think she needed to be enlightened and humiliated.
A quiet knock rapped on the door.
At once Kakashi stiffened, hand automatically moving to cover the half-length sword on the floor beside him. He didn't relax even after a soft feminine voice called, "Did someone order a nightcap?"
He switched his sharp glare to Jin and Ari, who were not nearly as concerned about their caller. "You ordered a nightcap?" he hissed quietly.
"Chill out, it's just a drink," Jin said blithely.
"We're on an undercover operation," he ground out, looking pointedly at the camera equipment strewn around the window. "If we're discovered, we'll be provoking another war with countless nations."
"It's just a drink," Jin snorted again as Ari called back towards the door, "Come in!"
A slim fair-haired woman on her knees pushed open the door and slid a tray inside across the floor, in the gratingly submissive manner that was so popular in a town built to accommodate male desire. She stood and entered and knelt once more to close the door before bringing the drink tray over to the two beckoning men. She noticed the recording equipment immediately. She would have been blind not to.
"What are you three up to?" she said with coy suspicion. "You're not voyeurs, are you?"
"Artists," said Jin.
"Photographers," said Ari.
"Would you like to be in our next model?" asked Jin.
The woman giggled and flapped a hand at him. "Oh, you," she said. Kakashi suspected she probably got hit on a lot and she had a large repertoire of overused brush-off lines.
"How about a little goodnight kiss to go with these drinks," Jin asked, pulling the woman down into his lap with a tug on her arm. She fell with a cry of surprise and Kakashi tensed again, fingers curling around the wooden sheath of his sword, until the woman laughed and wriggled playfully.
"You'll have to pay extra for that, boys," the hostess said with a forced laugh.
"That'll be all," Kakashi said curtly. They had a job to do. The lacking professionalism of his colleagues could wait until their current task was finished.
"Killjoy," Ari grunted.
"Who's that?" the hostess asked.
"The lighting director," Jin told her, hands wandering liberally over her thighs. "Arty types are very temperamental. Don't mind him."
"Huh." She extricated herself from his lap and stood, bowing to them all. "Thank you for your custom, gentleman. I'll wish you goodnight now."
As the woman made her way to the door with the empty tray, Ari and Jin shot half-hearted glares at Kakashi as if this was his fault. Which it was, of course. But just as she was about the close the door after her, Kakashi jumped to his feet and crossed the room to stop her.
She spied the heavy gold coins he was holding out to her. Immediately her demeanour turned coy and beguiling again. "Changed your mind?" she purred.
Kakashi handed her the money. "Don't tell anyone about us... photographers. Not your friends, not your boss. No one."
She accepted the money. "Anything else?" she asked with false meekness. She clearly expected him to ask for just one more thing from her.
Kakashi stepped back into the room and closed the door in her face. Over by the window, Jin and Ari knocked their cups of sake together in a wordless toast. "That was stupid," he said harshly. "If she talks-"
"Eh, we'll just kill her later before she has a chance," Jin muttered with a shrug, eyes back on the television screen. "It's not a big deal."
"No killing," Kakashi sighed. "That'll be even more suspicious. But if this mission goes to hell, you can be sure I'll be telling Danzou exactly who is responsible."
"You think he'd believe you, the disgraced Copycat, over us, two captains of Root?" Ari raised an eyebrow at him. "If this mission gets cocked up, do you really think he'll believe you had nothing to do with it? You're the only one here with an interest in sabotage."
Kakashi looked at him coolly. He could detect the threat there. On a whim, these two could ruin the mission and set world war four into motion, just to get him into trouble. They'd love that. Danzou would love that.
Jin grabbed Ari's arm, eyes glued to the camera, "Here it comes, he's finishing – is he – I don't believe it, they've fallen off the bed!"
"Let me see!"
The two men burst out laughing as Kakashi turned away, jaw clenched. "Are you done?" Kakashi asked coldly.
"Yeah, whatever," the Root captain, drained the last of his sake and stood. The arousal tenting his pants was about as obvious as it was predictable. "I'm off for some fun… coming Jin?"
"Sure."
"You can keep up the surveillance," Ari said. "And then you can go pick her up since you love her so much."
The two slipped out of the room, leaving Kakashi to stare resentfully at the camera still pointing out into the night.
'Seduction' was not a word that could fully convey the act. Like most people, Sakura took her knowledge of the old X-class missions from the heavily romanticised books and movies on the subject. There, seduction meant long, lingering looks, shorts skirts, plunging cleavage, hot whispered words in ears, lipstick, sexy music, and worldly confidence. It meant smoky, dimly lit bars or perhaps even sleazy hotels. It was not something she thought she could do with any convincing flair.
But all it had taken was a single look.
A little bit of light was trickling in between the crack in the sliding door. Sakura lay in the darkness, watching the tiny, weightless specks of dust drift in and out of sight, occasionally interrupted by a lumbering shadow that passed down the corridor outside cast by some slow, slurring patron or a quiet, neat staff member.
Sakura dragged her gaze reluctantly back to the large, wheezing form beside her. He didn't look as young as his profile picture had suggested. A little balder, a little leaner. These nights when he fell asleep straight after and forgot to send her away were the worst. She was stuck here, listening to his annoying whistling breaths and inhaling his sharp, unpleasant odour, unable to leave lest he reprimand her the next time he saw her, and unable to sleep herself until he was gone. Sometimes she marvelled at how easy it might be to reach over and crush his throat, ending everything. Those were the times when she gave herself a shake and warned that this man was an innocent pawn in this. It was she, after all, who had targeted him. It was she who had agreed to become his mistress, and it had been far too easy.
She'd met him in the onsen. Mixed bathing was a tradition that hung on tenaciously in Otafuku Gai, and it was difficult finding a bathhouse where you weren't obliged to share a heated pool with the opposite sex. On any other day Sakura would have preferred to shower alone in a tiny, grotty bathroom than take a dip with a bunch of strange men, but she couldn't provide her escorts with a good enough excuse to pass up what they saw as a perfect opportunity. Kakashi had given no input. As a handler, he was incredibly hands-off, and Sakura was only too grateful. While her escorts, Jin and Ari, planned to observe her first meeting with her target, Kakashi excused himself. Neither of them really wanted him to see her naked, though Jin and Ari were irritatingly eager.
But the meeting divested her of any expectations she'd held about seduction. It was hard to feel sexy, climbing naked into a square pool full of mostly middle-aged men with not a lick of make-up on. The steam turned her cheeks pink and her incorrigible hair never suited her when it was wet. No short skirts, no lipstick, no plunging cleavage. There was nothing to tantalise or tease with. Everything she possessed was on show for everyone to see, and she sank until the water was up to her chin, wondering which of the men in this room were her Root escorts. They'd never taken their masks off in her presence... and she had no clue if the man fanning himself to her right was just another nin from Suna out for a week's break from work, or one of her very own tormentors who would be watching everything she did and listening to everything she said, ready to report if she showed any sign of not giving this mission her all – or worse, if she deliberately sabotaged it.
The only man she did recognise was on the far side of the pool, and only because Kakashi had given her his photograph. His gaze met hers and for a moment she held it. That was all it had taken. All her agonising of how she was supposed to approach a stranger she felt no attraction or connection to were for nought. Within minutes, he'd waded over and his lean wiry frame was leaning on the edge of the pool beside her in the most repulsive display of masculine swagger. He needed so very little encouragement to believe she was interested. What was her name? Sakura. Where was she from? Konoha. A kunoichi? Of course. Isn't Konoha a bad place for kunoichi right now? That was why she'd left. The Hokage didn't mind her skipping town? Sakura had permission. Did she know she had nice eyes? Thank you.
It didn't seem to matter to Suda Hiroshi that Sakura never once smiled at him, or looked him in the eye. That she wasn't pepper spraying him was all the enthusiastic consent he needed. By the end of that first night she was in his hotel room, between his sheets, resigned to getting it over with as soon as possible. She had hoped, naively perhaps, that her target was a one-night stand sort of man, and once the deed was done he would be glad never to see her again. But a woman willing to sleep with him without demanding money in return must not have been a species he came across very often. When he'd asked if she would be sticking around the town for a while, she'd grimly answered 'yes' and that she would be willing to 'see him again'. He'd been under the impression that they'd been great together. Sakura decided not to puncture his delusions, though she had returned to her own hotel room the next morning, aching all over, and snarling unfairly at Kakashi when he dared to ask if she was alright.
She couldn't in good conscience blame Suda Hiroshi for being an unwitting party to this degradation. But she could blame him for the bite marks and the bruises on her wrist. She could blame him for pulling so hard on her hair and finding her pleading to slow down amusing instead of something to respect. Hiroshi may have been ignorant as to why Sakura had picked him out of all the men in that onsen, of all of the baths in Otafuku Gai, but some of the things she was compelled to 'consent' to when with him left her wondering if this man treated his enemies better than his women.
She'd been lying awake for three hours now, mortally tired, with every passing second intensifying her frustration. Hiroshi's snoring was only getting deeper, and tearing her hair out was beginning to feel like a pretty good way to cope. Unable to take it anymore, she slipped off the bed sheet she'd had clamped beneath her arms and began to stand from the futon.
Hiroshi's breathing changed, giving her only a fraction of a second's warning before his hand lashed out and clamped hard around her upper arm. "Where are you going?" he demanded, even though he was still half asleep.
"I'm going," she said shortly.
"You'll be back," he grunted, and rolled over to resume snoring.
Of course, Sakura would be back... when Jin and Ari decided she should go back. It was not, as he thought, because she liked the tasteless, overpriced jewellery he gave her, or his rough hand in bed. She got up and dressed before quietly slipping out the door. For now, at least, another night was over and she was free.
Armed with a red umbrella Kakashi stood in the rain, impervious to the stunning women who called to him from beneath the sheltered awnings outside their brothels, telling him not to be shy. His eyes remained trained on the entrance of the hotel, prepared to wait all night if he had to. A large gang of staff were standing around the entrance, clearly on their cigarette break. And then, suddenly, there was Sakura too, emerging between the bodies with all traces of make-up cleaned from her face and her hair pulled back into a tight, damp bun. Now she met his eyes bleakly, wearing a light green coat that was longer than the cocktail dress she wore beneath it.
Neither of them said anything as he held out the umbrella to her and she stepped beneath it. As they set off they walked closely side-by-side beneath its red canvas, but slowly. They'd only made it halfway around the block before she came to a complete stop. Kakashi glanced at her curiously.
"I… I don't really want to go back."
He nodded in understanding, knowing exactly what she was reluctant to face. "They're not there."
"Where are they?"
Whoring, because watching her fuck their target had gotten them hard? "They went out for a drink," he said diplomatically, "They probably won't be back until morning."
"Still…" she said, rubbing her arm self-consciously. "Can we go somewhere else for a while before…"
"Sure," he said softly. "Where would you like to go?"
He'd thought she would like to hit up a bar or a buffet, but instead she nodded towards the river. "Could we… go to the park?"
That surprised him. The park wasn't a particularly popular destination at this time of night in this kind of weather, but perhaps that was the point. He nodded again and walked with her down the hill towards the river, where the lights and sounds of the lively town faded behind them and a gated darkness stretched out on the other side of the trickling water. The gate was locked, to keep out drunken louts and indiscreet lovers who tended to rove around looking for places to desecrate at night, but that was no problem for a pair of ninjas. They climbed nimbly over the barrier and continued on down the dimly lit path until they came to a circular fountain surrounded by a quad of benches. Even though the seats were soaking wet with rain, Sakura sat down on one at once.
Wishing he'd thought to wear some kind of waterproof underwear, Kakashi stoically sat down beside her, keeping the umbrella raised so that at least they wouldn't get much wetter.
Sakura didn't speak. She seemed content to simply stare at the water gurgling up from the mouths of three stone fish, and Kakashi had no desire to pressure her into conversation if all she wanted to do was stare at fish.
But then she took a deep breath. "Could you close the umbrella?"
He hesitated. "We'll get soaked," he pointed out, though she probably knew that. "I don't want you catching a cold…"
"You can't catch a cold from rain," she intoned evenly. "It's a virus."
"Right." Because that reassurance certainly made him welcome the idea of being soaked to the bone with cold water. But if that was what she wanted…
Kakashi closed the umbrella and laid it on the seat beside him. At once, rain droplets were drumming down on his head and creeping down the back of his neck. He hunched his jacket tightly around his throat and sat with his arms tightly crossed, but Sakura was not concerned by the rain. She lifted her face to it and let it soak her dress.
She was crying. She wanted to feel the rain fall because she didn't want him to realise it, but that was her choice and he would play along with the charade if it made her feel better.
After a while though, he began to shiver a little.
Sakura noticed and turned to him distractedly like she'd only just realised he was sitting with her. "I'm sorry, this probably wasn't a good idea. We can go back to the inn if you like," she said, wiping the rain and disguised tears from her face.
"Nah," he said, forcing himself to stop trembling. Why she didn't seem to feel the cold as much as he did? "The two idiots might have come back early."
She looked at the ground. "If we're not there when they get back, we'll be in trouble. I'm not supposed to be out without supervision."
"I'm here," he pointed out.
"They don't trust your supervision, remember?" she said glumly.
Kakashi just gave a monosyllabic grunt and looked away into the shadows beneath the trees. He enjoyed talking about the painful restrictions on both of them during this mission about as much as Sakura did. It was why they passed so much of their time in silence these days. When it hurt to discuss the nightmare they were in, and small talk was unable to gloss over it, there wasn't much left to say.
But tonight Sakura broke her silence. "This guy…" she whispered, her voice nothing more than a thin breath that was nearly lost beneath the pitter-patter of raindrops. "I can't stand him… I can't stand his smell, or his breath, or his hands, or the way he speaks. He's awful. I wish… I wish I could just wrap my hands around his neck sometimes and squeeze until he…"
It was possibly the first time she had spoken about it since he'd knocked on her door a month ago to initiate her into what Hokage Danzou called an 'exciting new program'. Kakashi couldn't stop the shivers from returning. As hard as he'd tried to avoid seeing the subject of those photographs , he hadn't been totally successful. Even if he'd managed to avoid seeing most of the things Sakura was forced to endure, one could guess that the target's reputation for violence on and off the battlefield was not one to take lightly. He even wondered if that was why Danzou had chosen this man in particular as their target.
"No killing," Kakashi reminded her softly. "The cloud country can't be alerted to what we're doing here, and if Suda Hiroshi himself ever suspects..."
"I know," she breathed.
"It'll be over soon."
"This won't be over," she insisted. "I'm stuck here for as long as it takes to complete the objective, but what if that's not possible…?"
"What do you mean?" he asked softly.
She stared off at the fountain, lost in the absolute hopelessness of her situation. Kakashi's cold, wet hand reached across to grip hers, trying to reassure her that at least she wasn't alone, and she jumped, startled, and looked at him suddenly. "Let's run, sensei."
"What?"
"Right now, let's go," she said, coming alive as new fire danced in her eyes and her fingers squeezed his. "You said the idiots won't be back until morning – if we start running now, we could be in the wind country before they even realise we're gone. We could take sanctuary in Suna!"
He tried to smile, but it was painful. "Suna would be one of the first places Danzou's hunter-nin look for us."
"But-"
"We already talked about this weeks ago," he reminded her gently. "Only three missing-nin have survived longer than a month. Orochimaru, Sasuke, and Naruto. Do you really think we have a chance compared to them?"
He hated to say it. Watching the hope fade from her face made him feel like a brute, but four weeks ago when he'd first informed her about this mission, he'd told her that the choice to run had been there. But it was suicide then and it was suicide now.
"So you're saying I just have to bear it?" she asked, and her voice was no longer calm and even.
"I know, it's not fair," he breathed. Never for a moment had he underestimated how hard this would be for her, and he didn't doubt she was suffering. They all suffered. All the women in this program had only two choices – do or die – and he'd seen some of them crack long before Sakura.
He didn't want to see Sakura declared a rogue and hunted down, but was that really worse than what she was enduring now? She had originally turned down his suggestion to flee the village, but perhaps now after experiencing this mission, she had re-evaluated her originally position. Perhaps a short life on the run with nothing but certain death to look forward to was better than this?
Kakashi squeezed her hand back. "We can run," he said, "if that's what you want."
And he meant it. At that very moment he was ready to stand and start running – to leave everyone and everything behind – in order just to taste a modicum of freedom again.
But the light had gone from Sakura's eyes and it wasn't coming back. She smiled at him weakly, gratefully, but she pushed his hand back onto his own knee and let go. "No… this is selfish of me. I can't ask you to die with me, and you'll get in trouble if I escape under your watch. Danzou would suspect you of helping me and then…"
Then he'd probably be executed in the fashion of most dissenters and insubordinate nin.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything," she said, regaining her composure as easily as replacing a mask. "Let's just go back to the inn."
He searched her face. "You're sure?"
All trace of despair and hope was gone. "You're shivering, sensei. Let's go."
For all the good it did, he reopened the umbrella and together they walked back to the same grotty little inn he'd spent all day hiding in. She slept separately from her other teammates, in a room down the hall that was quite a bit smaller with space only enough for a futon and a rack of clothes selected for the mission that she called her 'costumes'. At her door, she patted him on the arm and went inside. "Thanks for the ear," was the last thing she said to him before shutting him out entirely.
Tomorrow they would go back to not talking about it. Then the call would come, and Sakura would be sent out, and it would be another long night of listening to Jin and Ari work themselves into a lustful frenzy over a camera, and knowing that as painful as it was for Kakashi, it was nothing compared to what Sakura was dealing with.
Kakashi went back to the room he shared with the idiots, glad at least that they didn't refrain from frequent all-nighters on the town when their orders had been to watch Sakura's every moon from sunset to sunrise and everything in-between. With any luck they'd both have syphilis by the time they were recalled.
In the corner of the room still sat the camera on his tripod with a packet of photographs propped against the wall. They would be handed to Danzou eventually, either as proof that the mission had been carried out according to plan or to give the old goat some masturbatory aids. He stared at them. Each picture within was a testament to Sakura's suffering, a faithful documentation of her every pain and humiliation. It repulsed him. He wanted to burn the packet and all its contents so that no one would ever get to witness her violation, but at the same time he knew that this was precious. Her suffering was to people like Jin and Ari nothing but pornography. To Kakashi, it was a tiny window into understanding what Sakura was going through... and he turned his eyes away from it.
It wasn't his place on this mission to understand or witness anything. He was here to ensure the success of the mission, but most of all to make sure Sakura was safe and well.
It was a pity that he failed this objective almost every night.
There was a water stain on the ceiling that appeared to be shaped like a tadpole. Sakura lay back on her blankets and stared up at it, wondering how old it was and what had caused it, and wondering if the rain water that was steadily sinking into the futon beneath her would cause a similar phenomenon for the tenants of the room below her.
She had no desire to change. No desire to dry off. Every time she returned to the inn it was just another long struggle to convince her limbs to cooperate and perform the same old nightly routine. It was a cliché that the stink of violation was something that made one want to wash and scrub at the skin until it was pink and raw. The reality was that Sakura didn't want to take her clothes off ever again. She didn't want to be naked, she didn't want to be vulnerable, and she would lay in a soaking bed all night in yesterday's spoilt cocktail dress, if only Kakashi wouldn't notice and start worrying. Well, he was already worrying, but she didn't want to invoke any more pity from him, however well he hid it.
It was supposed to get easier, wasn't it? After a while the groping hands should become less disturbing, the breath less vile, and the pain more blunted and numbed. But it didn't. It was a wound that kept being picked over, reopened again and again, unable to heal until infection was setting in and every time she went to him she felt like she would die if she had to bear a single moment more-
She closed her eyes and let those thoughts drift away.
Rising from the wet imprint on the sheets, she lethargically began to push her coat off and shed her dress to her waist. New bruises were developing along her arms, but there was nothing she could do about that. Hiroshi would notice if she were to heal herself of all the blemishes that he no doubt took personal pride in. And what were bruises at the end of the day? Just broken vessels and old blood. She had been stomped and kicked and punched by more men and women than she cared to recall. She'd been stabbed, run-through, garrotted, crushed, drowned, and buried alive. There was nothing to fear from bruises, and as far as Hiroshi was concerned, she might as well be just another prostitute in a town where prostitutes were a penny a dozen, and if she didn't like rough men then she would have refused him by now.
But he probably didn't realise that wasn't a choice available to her.
The jewels and money he gave her, as all mistresses were entitled to, were supposed to be handed straight over to her handler, Kakashi, or, since he usually failed to ask for them and refused them when she offered, given to one of her other 'superior' teammates. She imagined resenting this money; it was the monetary value of her body and her dignity, and it felt disturbingly light in her hand. But it was only money and silly rocks, and if anyone deserved it, it was her, not those two perverts. And so the money went into her bag, uncounted, and perhaps one day it would come in use when she decided to finally run away.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. That day would be tomorrow.
But she'd been saying that to herself since the first night, and she had yet to act. Was it because she was frightened of what would happen to her if she abandoned the mission? When she examined her feelings, she was left only more confused. She knew that she would rather risk death than complete this mission, so why did she do this to herself? Why did she stay?
Because there was another option. It was an option she barely contemplated consciously, but it hovered there on the edge of her awareness refusing to go away, reminding her that between ruin and death there was another choice, if she could just be brave enough to make it.
So was it courage that she was waiting for?
Was she just a coward?
Sakura pulled out a dry night yukata and changed into the gingerly. But something else had fallen out onto the floor with that made her insides contract when she noticed it.
This was the start of it all. This was the herald of her final mission for Konoha, and whenever she closed her eyes and could pretend it was all a nightmare that she could awaken from at any moment, she only needed to open her eyes and look at this thing in order to know nightmares could be very real.
She picked it up numbly and wondered how something so innocuous could make her hand tingle and her stomach turn. It was just a scroll; a red scroll. Yet this colour, in this form, carried a weight to it that made her tremble.
A crash against her door made her jump and nearly wrench her neck as she turned towards it. The sliding panel screeched open. Her lip curled to see Jin hanging there, a bottle in his hand. "You," he slurred, as a noxious smell of booze, cheap perfume, and sex rolled over her. "You pregnant yet?"
Sakura shook her head once, white hot fury boiled beneath her skin.
"Silly bitch," he hiccupped and belched. "We're stuck here until you do, so get a move on. The whores here charge way too much."
She remained stonily silent as he took another swig from the bottle and stepped further into the room.
"Out of curiosity, how much do you charge to let a guy jizz all over your face like that?"
Without stopping to think, because any moment's hesitation would have reminded her that attacking one's superior officer was a bad idea, she ran at the door and threw all her weight and momentum into a kick that sent Jin rocketing back against the wall on the other side of the narrow corridor. He didn't get up again. He just lay there, groaning and trying to open his eyes. A door opened further along the corridor and Kakashi jogged over, dressed in his own night robe.
"What's going on?" And even though his teammate was lying in a senseless heap on the floor, it was Sakura he looked at when he asked, "Are you ok?"
She looked at him, and wondered anxiously if he'd heard what Jin had said before she'd decked him – the guy hadn't been keeping his voice down. It was irrational to feel cold and sweaty at the thought that he might have overheard Jin's lewd comment about her when he had no doubt watched the things she did with Hiroshi every night. Still, there were just some things that she didn't want Kakashi to think of her.
Swallowing, she just mumbled something about drunken idiots and stepped back into her room. She hated that look he gave her as she closed the door, as if there was always something more he wanted her to say. He wore that look as if all she needed to do was ask and he would do anything to help her, however much or little she demanded. The look screamed at her. Just ask! Except she had asked, and he had looked pained and explained that running away from this mission was next to impossible.
So just how far would he go to help her anyway?
Tonight, Kakashi would drag Jin to bed, as he did most nights, and when the man woke up in the morning he probably wouldn't remember anything at all. Then later another call would come, and she'd have to go to Hiroshi again. And again. And again.
Sakura sank onto the bed with a low sigh that caught in her throat. Even here, alone, where she had no one but herself to hide from, she couldn't risk breaking down. She controlled her breathing and closed her eyes and... felt something in her hand. She was still holding the scroll.
It slipped from numb fingers and rolled away across the slanted floor to bump against a pile of wet clothes. She stared at it through the dim moonlight, the red dye so thick it looked black.
"Coward..." she whispered to herself as her eye slid shut and she sought sleep.
There, at least, she would be free from nightmares.
TBC
