A/N: Trigger warning for more explicit depictions.

Scarlet Scroll

The Last Man


The doors of the elevator slid back and the hallway of the corridor stretched before her like a runway. All she had to do was walk down it, but Sakura couldn't move. Her muscles had frozen up. What would she have given for the elevator to have broken, trapping her between the second and third floor, for as long as it took for Konoha to forget about her.

With a soft 'ping' the control panel lit up, signifying someone on another floor had pressed the call button, and the doors began to slide shut again with a sigh.

Oh, what the hell was she daydreaming for? Sakura's hand flashed out to stop the doors from closing on her, and stepped out onto the red carpet of the hallway. It seemed simple enough; one step after another, the same way she'd been doing all her life. Why was it so hard? Why did her leaf green heels feel like they were made of cement and lead, so that each step was a fighting effort to lift her foot? Why did her white sequenced dress feel like it was instead sewn with heavy coins? How was she still finding the power to move forward at all?

There was no other choice.

Sakura stopped outside the door of room 201 and knocked before she chickened out and had to spend another few agonising moments trying to work up the courage to do so. Hesitation was useless. It only prolonged the ugliness.

"It's open."

As it always was, but every time she wished by some miracle it was locked and he was too deaf to hear her knock. She pushed on the handle and entered. The air was uncomfortably warm and wet, so at least he'd showered beforehand this time, though the offensive stench of over-strong cologne and aftershave stung her nose. She already felt sick, but that was probably nerves more than anything. All she'd eaten today were two breath mints and half a bottle of soda. Kakashi had chided her, but a dread that had been deepening all day did nothing for appetite.

The room was empty. Was he still in the en-suite? He'd already put on the 'mood-enhancing' music on the old record player in the corner, although what exactly one was supposed to find relaxing and sensual about shrill opera was beyond Sakura. Just the sound of the soprano wailing set her teeth on edge, which was funny, since before she came to Otafuku Gai she'd never minded opera in the slightest. Now she just wanted to start smashing things the moment she heard the first warbling bars of an aria.

She moved to the window and ran a hand along the edge of the curtain, tempted to slide it shut. Somewhere in the inky blackness out there was a camera, and it was pointing directly at her. She'd tried closing the curtains once before, but the hell she'd caught off her teammates – including Kakashi – had hardly made it worth it. Her teammates needed to keep an eye on her. If it was just for the perverts, she wouldn't give a damn, but Kakashi would just worry himself hairless if she closed the curtains in case things went wrong with Hiroshi and she needed rescuing like some pathetic damsel in distress. It mattered so very little. If her cover was blown or Hiroshi got it into his head to kill her for some other reason, she'd either have won the fight or lost it by the time anyone over in that inn reacted. There was no fooling her. She knew that she was on her own.

Behind her, the door to the en-suite opened and Hiroshi emerged with a towel around his waist. She met his gaze in the reflection of the window and he smiled. Or rather, he smirked.

"My sweet Sakura, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"

It was only with absolute reluctance that Sakura had ever agreed to give her real name to this man, and she'd grown to loathe the sound of it on his tongue. When he moaned that name while he grunted and sweated against her, it was all she could do not to claw his eyes out.

Her chaperones insisted that she had to present her real identity to Hiroshi, for if any deception was discovered, the village could be thrown into jeopardy. They wanted to be sure that if and when the Cloud village (or any other village they were stealing from) noticed one of their highly exclusive bloodlines had taken root in Konoha in the years to come, they would only have the irresponsibility of their own nin to blame for going to bed with kunoichi they knew were foreign. You could go to war over a deception to steal bloodlines, but not personal infidelities.

Perhaps what was worse was that it was fashionable for prostitutes in Otafuku Gai to take on flower-themed 'professional' names. There had to be hundreds of Sakuras walking the streets in this town, and Hiroshi seemed to have done business with several. So much so that with the way he treated her she sometimes wondered if he remembered she'd agreed to be his lover, not just another flower-named whore.

He came to stand behind her, close enough for her to feel the heat of his body through her clothes. His hands clasped her upper arms and turned her. They were only wet from the shower, but to Sakura they felt like slime, and she had to strongly clamp down on the urge to shudder.

"How is the family, Hiroshi?" she asked evenly. It had been over a week since she'd last seen him, and while Sakura had enjoyed sending Kakashi out to buy tampons, Hiroshi had returned to his village.

"Is that a note of bitterness I hear?" wondered Hiroshi, soothing the backs of his fingers across her cheek. She wished he wouldn't. It took a lot of make-up and effort to bring colour to the pale slab that was her face, and she didn't appreciate him messing her hard work up. "You know you're the only woman I love."

Sakura shrugged ever so slightly, not caring in the slightest if this was a lie he told to all his mistresses. The only one she felt sorry for was the man's wife. "I understand our arrangement."

"Then why do you look so sad, my flower?" Hiroshi's breath rolled across her face. Sakura held hers. "Why don't you smile for me?"

The corner of Sakura's mouth twitched into something that would have baffled facial expression experts everywhere. Here was a smile, the might say, yet here was also irritation, disgust, anger, fear. Despair. Hiroshi always seemed blind to whatever he did not want to see. He saw Sakura's smile and gave his own self-satisfied sneer. His slick fingers coiled around her jaw, just a fraction too tightly, forcing her head up, and his thumb smeared against her lips. There went her lipstick. "It's been a while, my love."

"How do you want it today, Hiroshi?" she asked, her voice a heavy monotone she'd never heard herself use outside of this room.

"How 'bout you stop call me that for a start," he said, squeezing her chin hard. "You know what I like."

She hesitated. A cold jolt of nausea lurched in her stomach, but there was nothing she could do about it. "Yes, daddy."

Heavy lust clouded his eyes with just that one word alone. She swallowed her revulsion and stepped back against the window as he stepped forward. He didn't appear to notice her instinctive recoil. He only grabbed her tighter around the face, holding it up to stare down at her with heavy-lidded eyes. "How's my precious angel?" he murmured. "Have you been good while I've been away? I bought you a gift."

Sakura suppressed a deep sigh. Now she would have to work even hard to manufacture a convincing display of gratitude that would satisfy his ego. It at least gave her a tiny moment to breathe freely when he moved away and pulled something from his bag by the bed: a velvet box. More generic jewellery.

"I think it matches your eyes beautifully," he said, except this opal necklace was blue, not green. Sakura stared at it listlessly for a moment before forcing herself to smile. She had no idea where she drew the strength on to thank him and tilt her head forward so he could fix it around her neck like a shackled collar.

"It would look better on you without all 'this'," Hiroshi said. By 'this' he must have meant her clothes, for in the next moment he had shoved the dress straps off her shoulder, pushing the garment to her waist. Sakura stiffened fractionally. Oddly, she was more concerned about the window behind her than she was about Hiroshi's greedy little eyes sweeping her breasts.

"Lovely," he muttered, stepping against her once more. His mouth was too close. The stink of his breath was threatening to make her wretch. "No kisses," she reminded him, more tersely than a man might want from a woman he'd just given an expensive gift.

A little resentment crept into his lust-filled expression. His lip curled. Suddenly Sakura was thrust around to face the window and squashed between it and his body. "For someone so cheap," he chided her, "you sure are an uptight little bitch."

He grabbed her exposed her breast with his rough, squeezing fingers, while his other hand plunged beneath the skirt of her dress to rip down her underwear. He didn't care that his nails scratched deep lines down her thigh. In fact, he probably intended to do that.

"Not by the window," she gasped out, "please."

And perhaps because she'd made it clear that she didn't want to do it by the window, he became all the more convinced this was the right place. When she tried to move, he grabbed the back of her neck and slammed her forward against the glass. Her forehead smacked against the windowpane with a crack, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to break anything. "You've been naughty," he grunted. "Be good and take Daddy's punishment like a big girl."

At least, she thought, it would be over soon.


Jin was rubbing himself through his pants again, and Kakashi was trying hard not to notice and keep his mind on the papers spread out on the floor before him. The Hokage had put him through some extremely unpleasant business on this mission, yet sitting in a dark room with two animals was strangely the least of his worries right then.

"Where's the medical records for Suda?" Kakashi asked, flipping through papers detailing their target.

"Couldn't bring everything with us," Ari said. He was adjusting the focus on the camera while Jin leaned on the windowsill with his binoculars.

"Please tell me you at least remember what was on it?" Kakashi sighed.

"Why? There wasn't anything important on there."

"We're on a eugenics mission," Kakashi pointed out. "I'd think the health and fertility of the man in question were pretty damn important."

Ari looked at him with a scowl. "Let me guess – Sakura told you Suda's sterile, and you're dangling from the bait like a guppy. Get over it. She was lying."

Kakashi slapped the papers down onto the floor again. "How do you know if you don't have the medical records?"

"Because while you, the po-faced asshole you are, might presume your teammates can't tie their own shoelaces without supervision, we do actually know how to do our jobs. The medical records were the first thing the Hokage looked at. Hiroshi's fertility is better than average, and that was one of the reasons why he was picked. His count was ninety million, and that's probably higher than the three of us combined."

"Speak for yourself," Jin rebuked swiftly. "Mine's fifty mill."

"Seventy mill," Ari said just as quickly.

They both glanced at Kakashi,

"One hundred and ninety million," he supplied

"Fuck off," Ari snapped. "At least make it realistic if you're going to lie. And anyway, it's not the number that counts, it's how they move."

Kakashi shrugged, not caring for the almost literal dick-measuring competition. "How old were these medical records?"

"Six months old. There is nothing wrong with that man. How many subjects have you overseen by now? Haven't you realized these whores will say anything to get out of their responsibilities?"

Kakashi didn't even know where to begin with the irrationality of that comment, although it wasn't the first of its kind. While these two ridiculed Sakura freely for being a 'whore' or a 'slut', they would acknowledge even in the same breath that she was here against her will and desperately resistant to the things they were making her do. She was damned whatever she did or felt. Which was why it felt all the more galling that when Suda Hiroshi had told her about his sterility, she'd gone to Ari first.

Perhaps it had been a lie after all…? And so what if it wasn't true? If a lie could get Sakura out of Hiroshi's grasp, it was worth supporting. Without those medical records, however, he was short on evidence.

"Something could have happened in six months," he said. "I don't think we should rule out that there's a problem with the target. It might be best to return to Konoha and-"

"And be sent right back out again," Ari sighed, turning his back on Kakashi. "She'll probably get knocked up before the end of the month and if she doesn't, she'll be reassigned anyway eventually, so why lose sleep over it?"

"And why rush to be reassigned?" Jin asked. "What if the next guy is worse? Last I heard, another name was being bandied around as a potential donor before we were sent out… Azuka Renji, from the rock village. Not bad looking, but he already beat his wife to death and three mistresses. If you told her about that guy, she might start appreciating what a gentleman Suda Hiroshi is…"

"Doesn't look like much of a gentleman to me," Ari said, the smirk all too obvious in his tone.

Kakashi couldn't stop himself. He looked through the window and immediately wished he hadn't. Even from here he could see the two figures silhouetted in the square of light from their target's hotel room, and he could not look away. The sight didn't transfix him with arousal the way it did for the other two men. Instead, nausea rolled through him thickly. How could anyone find that arousing? He was witnessing the total degradation of a close teammate; a friend.

But was turning away from the sight as good as trying to turn a blind eye to what was happening to her, selfishly, for his own comfort? For certainly whether he watched these scenes or not made no difference to Sakura and her mental or emotional wellbeing. Then again, if it made no difference, why should he torture himself?

Kakashi dragged his gaze from the monitor and started for the door. "I'll head round to meet her," he said.

"She's nowhere near finished yet," Ari said.

Kakashi didn't dignify that with a response. Hanging around a hotel entrance in the cold was infinitely preferable to lingering on in a room full of horny men who wouldn't understand empathy if it kicked them in the teeth – something Kakashi wasn't sure he would be able to refrain from doing if he stayed in that room much longer. So he headed towards the hotel, ready for when Sakura walked out, and ready to help her pick up the pieces of another night.


Even when it was over, it was never quite over. Hiroshi was spent and deeply relaxed as only a man could be after sex, but he wouldn't let her up just yet. She'd been dragged down to the floor after his legs had failed him, and there she crouched with the repugnant man still wrapped around her, inside her, and her fingers still gripped the window sill for dear life. She could no longer stop the shivers, though hopefully he mistook them for the pleasurable quivers normally felt in the aftermath.

"My sweet Sakura, you are something special," he said, moving her hair aside so that she felt every acrid puff of his breath against the side of her neck. She tried her best not to lift her shoulder and recoil, but when his hand slid up her tensed arm toward her wrist and toward the pink and red bracelet that Kakashi had given her, she moved sharply, tucking her arm against her stomach and covering the charm bracelet with her other hand. Too obvious. She shouldn't have done that, for now she felt him pause and stiffen. She was always cool with him, but so far she'd managed to avoid physically withdrawing.

But this had been a gift from Kakashi. She couldn't let Hiroshi stain it with the same filth that he'd permanently stained her with.

"So you have another man paying you with trinkets too, huh?" he grunted. "Auditioning to be a prostitute?"

She might as well have been. She would rather he gave her money straight up instead of tasteless jewels she couldn't spend.

"But you're not like these other whores, Sakura," Hiroshi said, wrapping his hand around her throat and pressing his fingertips into her jugular just hard enough to feel a touch threatening. "All these other greedy women can come here and take everything I give them with a dirty smile because their dignity is a fair price to pay for the money. But you don't care about the money, do you? And you hold onto the tattered remains of your dignity like you do your dresses. Why do you bother, when it's beyond all repair?"

Was he talking about her dresses or her dignity?

"You're a rare find in a town like this," he went on, coiling his hand around her breast now like he had a right to it. "It's been a while since I came across a girl who would leave the prestige of the kunoichi behind to come to this rotting pit of souls, for what? To make pennies spreading your legs? Why would you do that? What is it they have on you? Are they threatening your family? Do you have debts to pay? You haven't been doing this for long because your spirit isn't broken yet, so I doubt you've had many other men. So why are you here, Sakura? My sweet Cherry."

This was too close to the truth for Sakura's liking. Hot discomfort burned in her stomach, and she tried to get up and pull away from him. "I should go," she muttered.

He held her tight, keeping her back pinned to his chest. "I love it when they wriggle and beg and plead and scream for mercy and reprieve. But it's just an act. It's just the fashion to pretend they hate it - but with you… it's all genuine. Sakura, you can't pay for such a beautiful thing as you."

He was getting hard again. She could feel him swelling inside of her once more, and she immediately began to struggle. "I have to go," she said. "I have somewhere to be."

"Your other lover will have to wait." He pushed her flat onto the floor to quash her half-hearted struggles and rested his considerable weight on her arms, trapping her completely. He began thrusting into her, vocalizing his delight with loud, rhythmic moaning.

And Sakura froze. The great, powerful kunoichi who was perhaps the strongest kunoichi in her village, froze beneath the onslaught. She always did. On ordinary missions, she never hesitated or stalled, always reacting to threats and attacks swiftly, sometimes even before she knew what she was responding to. That was the nature of combat and training; to hone the body and mind so that fighting and defending became as close to an instinctive skills as breathing and walking – something done without thinking.

But here, now, being fucked by a powerful man from another village who reveled in her resistance, who had already deduced she was here against her will, and whose knowledge of her identity alone could herald another world war and her untimely death, she froze. Her mind went blank and all she knew how to do was endure. Just endure. Her training had never prepared her for this, and all she could think to do was do nothing. It would be over soon.

His thrusting grew faster and his moans reached a pitch. Sakura might have covered her ears to block him out if they hadn't been held down, but there was no getting away from those animalistic sounds, nor ignoring the dribble of his wet release inside her. She wanted to scream, and twist and convulse madly. She could wash his sweat off her skin and scrub his smell out of her clothes, but it would always be there. She would carry his taint around with her for days, and even though his sterility meant she would be trapped in this place for months… she couldn't deny that she was glad she could and would not ever conceive his child.

He eased back from her with a satisfied grunt, sated and tired at last. "You may go," he said, as if he was dismissing a servant.

Sakura didn't feel like moving. Standing and walking would exacerbate the stickiness between her legs, making her feel filthier and more used than she did already. Yet her desire to get out of there overruled every other hesitation, and she pushed herself to her feet swiftly, tugged up her underwear and smoothed down her skirt, and pushed the straps of her dress back onto her shoulders.

She stunk, she was sweaty and soiled and in dire need of washing, and normally she might have stayed on just long enough to make use of his shower before she had to face Kakashi and the rest of the team, but tonight was different. He'd disturbed her more than he had during any other visit so far and she had to leave. Now. If she didn't, she knew somehow, in some way, she would break.

"Such a rush," he chuckled at her as she jerked on her coat and picked up her bag. "You know how to make a man feel special."

"Get lost," she whispered acidly beneath her breath. She was already marching toward the door before she'd gotten her shoes on properly.

"You'll be back," he called after her.

The door crashed in her wake and she turned to rush for the elevator at the end of the hallway. Why did it feel like she was running? Why did she feel like she needed to run? Hiroshi had never come after her before and he didn't where to find her once she left this building, so why did she fell so hunted?

She'd always thought he was as creepy as they came, but until now she'd at least assumed that she shouldn't hate him just because he'd had the misfortune of being selected by the Hokage for his eugenics program. He thought she was a willing mistress. Or at least, that was what Sakura thought. She couldn't blame him for the things he did to her when he didn't know she had no choice in the matter… but he did know. He liked it. Suddenly the things he'd done to her… the things he would do to her…

Sakura would sooner die.

The light above the elevator lit up before she could reach out to press the button. Someone was already coming up, and instinct screamed it was Kakashi. He always came to pick her up, and while facing him was always a little wearisome after another night with Hiroshi, this time everything inside her retreated from the thought of seeing him. She hadn't showered – she stank – she looked as bad as she felt… and how much further did she have left to fall in his eyes?

She whirled around, looking for a quick escape. The other elevator was already waiting, and she punched the button to open the door and leapt inside. The doors began to sigh shut, just as she heard Kakashi's elevator begin to open… and then he was too late; the elevator was moving down and, for now at least, she was safe.

In the foyer, she crossed to the entrance, holding her coat tightly closed over her ruined dress. In the street outside, the wind was cold and biting, but rarely did that ever seem to deter festivities. A crowd of drunken businessmen stampeded past, and Sakura waited until the street was clear before stepping out.

Of course, her instincts had been known to be wrong.

"Sakura?"

Panic and shame slammed through her in equal measures. She jerked guiltily towards the man who'd been standing in a tiny little quad beside the hotel entrance, sheltered from the window. Kakashi had never been in that elevator. He'd been down here all along.

"Kakashi-sensei?" she responded hoarsely, subconsciously skittering back a few steps as he approached her. "I wasn't expecting you to – I mean – never mind."

He looked at her curiously, most likely confused by her odd manner. Then his gaze trailed over her, from head to toe and back again, so quick that most people would have missed it, but not Sakura. She knew little could fool Kakashi's cutting senses and his criminal sense of smell had been why she'd always been so careful to shower before meeting him. If she could smell the stink of sex and sweat and semen on herself, of course he could.

Yet, as always, if Kakashi thought or knew anything untoward, he didn't show it. "Alright?" he asked her lightly, the same as he did any other night.

She nodded.

"That's new," he commented, looking at her throat.

Sakura's hands flew up, wondering if Hiroshi had left bruises when he'd grabbed her around the neck… but no. Kakashi had only seen the opal necklace. She pulled a face and snapped it off. As broken links rained down on the paving at her feet, she slapped the opal pendent into Kakashi's hand. "Here. Fence it and buy something interesting."

He slipped the broken necklace into his pocket like a magician vanishing a coin. She wouldn't see it again. "Do you want to go back to the inn?" he asked.

She nodded again. There would be a shower there, even if the chance of running into their teammates was strong. Once again, the numbed apathy that would have her wallowing in her own self-pity and filth was overcome by Kakashi's presence. She wanted to be clean – for him. She hated that he had to see her this way.

Almost as much as she hated that he didn't seem to care how far she'd been felled. Even now, as they walked back to the inn, he rested his hand lightly on her shoulder, arm around her back, as if she didn't smell like a foul, trussed up whore. She could have pushed him away. But making a fuss now would just create an even bigger fuss that she didn't have the energy to start or deal with.

Up the rickety staircase of the inn, they both cast furtive looks down the tunnel of corridor to the room Kakashi shared with the two idiots, and judging from the quiet and the darkness at that end of the floor, it was safe to say they'd already left for their obligatory night of touring the cat houses of the cheapest district. Sakura's emotions were already too frayed and disorderly to feel relieved they were gone, though she heard Kakashi sigh in what was probably relief. They headed for the bathroom shared by all the floor's residents. It was always damp and smelled of mildew, and Sakura had never stepped into it when the floor wasn't soaked with water and the mirror wasn't steamed and flecked with all kinds of hazardous materials.

"Have your shower," Kakashi told her. "I'll find you a towel."

And then he left her. Sakura took a deep lungful of warm, moist air and probably numerous mould spores too, and sat down, fully clothed on the wooden showering stool that was still damp from the last naked ass to use it. With Kakashi gone, she felt a little better… a little freer. But now all she wanted to do was sit here and cry.

It was only the knowledge that Kakashi would be back and fully expecting to hear the sound of a shower going that moved her to start stripping off her soiled clothing and clicking the old water heater into life. Water poured over her head. It drummed against her face and her breast and when she looked down at the water swirling away across the tiled floor to the drain, she expected it to be filthy… yellow, black, puss white…

Instead she saw only a streak of red.

For a heartbeat, she quite calmly assumed she was imagining things. The trained professional kicked in before she did, realizing she was bleeding and hunting down the source.

It was her nose

Sakura had never had a nosebleed in her life that hadn't been caused by anything less than a punch directly to the face when it was unavoidable. She simply didn't get them otherwise. But tonight she didn't think anything had touched her nose at all...

Now the medic in her slowly awakened from the hibernation it had been put in since the start of this ludicrous mission. She knew her body better than she knew any body, living or dead, and she knew when something wasn't right. A spontaneous nosebleed might not have been cause for concern in anyone else, but this was the first she'd had in her entire life and for it to occur now of all times…?

Sakura sent a little probing chakra along the veins in her nasal passages and sealed the bleed far more effectively than pinching her nose and tilting her head back. And then she kept on probing, looking for the real cause – the weakness that had caused such an innocuous rupture.

She found it in her very blood and the muscle of her heart. It was damaged.

The tiny tears were barely perceptible, and if Sakura had been a lesser medic or not so familiar with her own body, she would have overlooked it. She could fix it in an instant, but what shook her was that this wasn't a symptom of sickness or disease. She had had a perfectly fit heart when she'd woken up that morning, and all that had happened been then and now had been an encounter with a powerful shinobi who could, with the sound of his voice alone, destroy internal organs.

The deafening hiss of the water hitting the tiles was interrupted by a soft knock at the door. "I'm leaving your towels and your night robe out here," she heard Kakashi say on the other side.

Sakura didn't take in a word. Her heart was thundering in her ears with the implication of what she'd just discovered.

Once sufficiently scrubbed to at least fool her own nose that she smelled like herself again, she dressed in the sleeping yukata Kakashi had left and padded back to her room to find him sitting on the ledge of the open window. With the inn being so old, the windows in these guest rooms didn't have glass, and to look outside one needed to push open a wooden shutter. Aside from a dim, scuffed lamp standing in the corner of the room, it was only from this window and the dazzling illuminations in street below that her room had any light whatsoever.

When she entered, Kakashi closed it, and the room suddenly plunged into a cozy orange glow, courtesy of the one valiant lamp. "Do you feel tired? I can go if you want to sleep."

Sakura shook her head silently and moved to sit on her futon. He'd folded back the covers for her, and the sheets were fresh. He must have changed them while she'd washed, and a painful twinge of gratitude caught in her chest and made it hard to breathe. How absurd, that after all she'd suffered through in the past few weeks, it was Kakashi's gesture of making her bed that brought her the closest she'd gotten so far to tears.

But Sakura had not been battling with her tumultuous emotions for so long to lose it now, and she held her face and voice as neutral as ever. "You can stay," she said softly. "I'm not really tired at all."

He seemed to know something was different tonight, but he knew better than to ask if anything was wrong, because the only answer to that was yes. Everything was wrong. And since there was nothing to be done about that, neither of them brought it up. So when he spoke, he framed his words very carefully. "If it was too much," he began slowly, "we can call it off for a few days. We can tell the two idiots you've come down with something… they couldn't force you."

Sakura put on a smile, but it was agony. Was this the best they could do? Fake sickness and hope to scrounge a few days reprieve? Such pathetic, weaseling subterfuge would only go so far.

The dangerous idea that had been turning over silently in the back of her mind for some time now was again clawing its way back into her thoughts, reminding her that if she was brave enough, if she was smart enough, and if she had nothing left to lose, there was a way out of this town. It would be an incredible sacrifice in itself, but every day her other alternatives had been looking increasingly monstrous. When just the thought of living to see another night like this made her stomach twist and churn with real sickness – with real fear – she knew she'd run out of alternatives.

She decided then and there, and her conviction terrified her.

"I'm not going back," she said.

Kakashi was politely confused. "Back… where?"

"To Hiroshi," she said. "I'm not going to see him again."

His frown deepened. "What are you saying?"

What was she saying? She could tell him that she'd felt threatened today, more than she ever had before, and that she had her suspicions that Hiroshi was using his bloodline limit against her – not in any way to injure her significantly or even purposefully – but this risk alone should have been enough to call off the mission.

Except she knew it wouldn't be. If Sakura told the two idiots about it, they would assume she was lying again as she had no proof other than her gut feeling that Hiroshi was harming her, and then where would she be left? Even if they believed her, it would only mean reassignment to another man and the nightmare would begin all over again.

She had made her decision, and finality and sheer enormity of it burned away all the logic and rationality that had been on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill forth.

"I'm not getting out of here until I conceive," she said bleakly to Kakashi, "and we both know that isn't going to happen with Hiroshi."

"So… what? You want to abandon the mission and go on the run?" He watched her closely, and his body had gone very still. He sensed her decision was an important one, even if he didn't get it.

"Danzou has thrown so much men and money into ANBU, I don't see how I'd survive to see Friday," she said. Perhaps she was selling herself a little short… she knew she could last at least till Sunday. "I don't plan to run."

Kakashi's expression clouded over with wariness. "You can't just sit there and refuse to do the mission. You'll be taken home and tried as a dissenter," he warned. "That's probably what Danzou is hoping you'll do, so he'll have an excuse to imprison you and throw his weight around to get you hanged for treason. He's been wanting to make an example of Naruto and Tsunade's supporters ever since he assumed the title. "

"I don't plan to be made an example of either," she said, her voice nowhere near as strong as her resolve.

"Then what are you planning?" he demanded.

"I'll just complete the mission. I'll conceive."

"But you just said Hiroshi-"

"There's more men than Hiroshi in this town, sensei!" she snapped. "Any number of them would be able to fulfill the requirement."

His head reared back a fraction, startled. "You know that's why Ari and Jin were assigned as escorts, don't you? They're chaperones. They're here precisely to stop that kind of 'cheating'."

He said that as if this was all a game. Sakura shrugged her shoulders loosely and raised her hands, palms out, inviting him to take a look around. "It's fortunate then, that they're the least reliable chaperones ever assigned to anyone. Where are they now?"

Right at that very moment, Jin and Ari were on the other side of Otafuku Gai, sitting in a dark bar with music so loud the topless woman couldn't hear their catcalls as she took their money and gyrated her hips for their entertainment. As chaperones went, they were particularly useless, as although they'd made some token protests at the beginning of the mission about Sakura getting her own room away from them, they'd quickly decided she was too boring to watch all the time and too dull to succeed in 'cheating'.

Now, most days, she saw very little of them, spending almost all her time out with Kakashi, just soaking in the more family friendly amusements the town had to offer or just hanging around in the solitary privacy of her own room. She'd already had plenty of opportunities to subvert the mission directive, and no doubt she would have many more.

Kakashi, however, did not seem at all taken with her plan. "I don't think this is feasible," he said plainly. "If you're caught, you can kiss freedom goodbye, and whoever you enlist to help you cannot be informed of what you're after or else he become a liability, but a lack of discretion on his part could be an even bigger liability. So, what, are you just going to pick up men off the street? Take them home and have as much unprotected sex as possible until you're pregnant? This is Otafuku Gai – half the men in this town have some sort of venereal disease. I couldn't imagine anything more risky than-"

"I wouldn't, even if I could," Sakura interrupted loudly, her stomach rapidly sinking at his blunt condemnation. "I'm not someone who can just go up to strangers and ask for sex so casually and easily as that." She bit off the urge to add "like you", though the image of the voluptuous Madam Wisteria with the beautiful, smiling face was lodged in her mind, along with the imagined picture of a younger Kakashi on her doorstep with that fistful of money. Perhaps it hadn't been like that, and it wasn't fair to accuse him of being easy. All she knew was that she would never have the guts to approach a prostitute, even the male ones.

And if she couldn't do that, she knew trying to pick up a random man to help her conceive would be next to impossible. After Hiroshi, she felt a little more wary of soliciting sex from men she knew nothing about, if she hadn't already been wary enough.

"I need someone," she began slowly, her fingers beginning to tremble unseen in her lap, "who knows the risks and understands the need for discretion. I need someone I can trust."

Kakashi had always been such an intelligent man. And right now the arms that he had folded across his chest like a barrier against her dropped and he stared at her in amazement. Sakura couldn't meet his eye; she was too ashamed. The moment the words had left her mouth she knew she'd gone too far.

"No," he said, one syllable which betrayed his disgust.

"You said I only had to ask, and you'd help me with any-"

"Not that. Not ever," he said shortly. "How could you ever ask me that?"

It was too late now to take back the words and lock them away behind the cage of her teeth. She'd summoned the courage to say them at least and even if he rebuked her so quickly and harshly, she knew she had to go on. "I can't get out of here until I conceive," she pleaded. "How else am I supposed to-"

"You're tired and you're upset," he interrupted. "You're not thinking clearly or you'd realize what a… it's not happening, Sakura. Just get some rest and tomorrow we'll forget about this."

Icy anger seared her nerves at his flat refusal to even contemplate her request, and she jerked her eyes up to see him glaring back. "You seemed ready to die with me not so long ago," she pointed out, "yet you won't-"

"This is very different!"he protested. "Dying is easy, but…"

He let that despicable sentence hang, so Sakura clenched her jaw and finished it for him. "Sleeping with me is worse than death."

"It's not just about that – if it was -?" He cut himself off. "This is a child we're talking about. You can't just expect someone to make such a huge commitment from nothing. That's… that's…"

That was exactly what was expected of Sakura. She didn't have to point it out, because he too was realizing belatedly how churlish it was to object when she had never had a choice in the matter. Sakura, however, was not like Danzou. She wouldn't force the issue, even if it was within her power.

All she could do was ask. "Please. I don't know what else to do," she said, and her voice was one shade shy of begging. "Just listen-"

"Not now. In the morning…" Kakashi turned away, pacing along the short length of the room awkwardly like he didn't know what to with his body anymore. He wouldn't consider it. Not even for a second. "Get some rest," he said with dreary finality; the conversation was over and his hand was on the door. "You'll feel more yourself in the morning."

Without giving her another chance to respond, he slipped through the door like a ghost, vanishing silently and so quickly into darkness that she wondered if he'd ever been there at all. Then all she could hear was the pounding of some musical baseline in a bar across the street. Or was that the throb of her heart in her ears?

He'd run away from her. He was the only person keeping her sane in this hellhole, and in one minute she'd alienated him completely. Of course he would never do that… it was just too much to ask someone to sacrifice.

Just too much…

Sakura slowly lifted her hands and pressed them firmly over her ears until all she could hear was the low, reassuring thrum of nothingness, as if she was sitting on the edge of a void so big and empty she could hide there forever if she chose. Out of reach of Hiroshi. Out of sight the two idiots. Hidden from Kakashi's disgust and shock that she would ever suggest he give her a child and an easy way out.

Slowly, she lowered her hands to stare at the intersected lines on her palm that were said to mark out one's future, and detail the life one would lead. But for some time now, her heart, fate, and life lines had been obliterated by stretched looking scar tissue. Whatever her palms had once shown was long forgotten, but she remembered many occasions as a child when she'd sat in the wild flower meadows with Ino during their kunoichi classes, and they had interpreted their palms according to no particular authority other than whim. Sakura had simply seen only what she'd wanted to see – that she would live a long time, be disgustingly successful, and that she would marry a handsome man and have three children.

She had given up such romanticized, idealistic nonsense many years ago, but she had always assumed that she would at least be happy, and that the choices which affected her life would always be hers to make. But now, she realized a little numbly, she had given up entirely. There were no more illusions of a handsome husband to give her beautiful children in a quaint home behind some kind of picket fence. She acted now merely to survive. A child was a tool; a male partner, a necessary evil.

It was the only way to wrest back control of her life. She would not give Danzou what he wanted – neither a genetically idealized child, nor an excuse to sign her death warrant. If Kakashi wasn't willing to help her after all his promises to walk on red-hot coals for her, she would just have to find someone else. He wasn't the only man who could aid her, and she didn't need his approval or permission to seek someone else out either.

Despite her self-reassurances, a little despair crept back in – for what kind of sorry state was she in that she could be reassured by these thoughts? Kakashi had been her best hope, not because he was the best male specimen available, but because he was safe. He was trusted.

He was her friend.

But perhaps… this had been taken from her too?


TBC