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Sakura


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Her body ached and her feet hurt. She had been dead wrong when she had thought the back pain from that first night of sleeping on the hard ground was the worst.

This, this was incomparably worse than that.

What little food she had with her was quickly running out and her stomach burned with the beginnings of hunger. Her calves and thighs hurt so bad that only sheer will kept them from folding under her weight.

Sakura wanted to cry.

"Sakura-chan?" She heard Naruto call out from ahead and looked up to see that both boys had stopped a few feet away. Naruto's brows furrowed in concern and Sasuke had an exasperated look on his face.

"Yeah, I'm okay," she managed to say, and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, following the boys deeper into the foliage.

They had left Kakashi behind almost two days back when he had noticed that they were being ambushed and told them to go in the opposite direction into the forest while he lead the pursuing party away from their path.

The forest was huge and dark and dangerous, aptly named Forest of Death for the number of poisonous animals and plants that lived there, and the only safety they had in the shade of the monstrous trees were from Orochimaru's men. One, because they would not expect the young Prince Naruto to be lurking about alone in a death trap with two other children, and two, because the forest provided a good cover in the form of trees.

Even then, their chances were slim with the poisonous plants and the shortage of food, not to mention wild animals.

She dearly hoped there weren't any huge, man-eating animals in this forest. She had slept poorly since the beginning of their journey three days ago, and even more poorly since Kakashi had left them on their own. She would wake up in starts or with the notion that something was crawling up her spine only to realize it was a nightmare, and she would lay awake, eyes wide, watching for any animal that might suddenly strike even though if they did, she had no way to defend herself. Not really, because they were on the forest ground with little to no weapons.

And they were out of food, save for a few crackers in her bag. She didn't dare try eating anything from the forest; it was suicide if you didn't know a lot about plants and poisons and she barely knew an apple tree from a peach tree.

They were going to die here, her, Sasuke and Naruto, and when Kakashi came back –if he came back, he was going to find their skeletons flayed of flesh by the wild, flesh-eating beasts of the forest. Her father would regret ever sending her to Rasengan, and she would never see him again.

She swallowed back a sob, and blinked rapidly, trying to will away the moisture gathering at the corner of her eyes. The tears came anyway, streaming down the sides of her eyes, down to her cheeks and she brushed them away once, twice before giving up.

What was the point if they were going to die anyway?

She sniffled loudly and Sasuke, who was only a few steps ahead of her, turned to glare at her.

"Would you stop crying, Sakura?" he asked, annoyance evident in his voice.

"Don't be such a bastard," she heard Naruto say and then she felt his arms on her shoulders.

"We're all going to die," she sobbed, and for the first time in her life, didn't reprimand Naruto for trying to touch her.

"No, we're not," he said, his voice strong. "I'm going to protect you Sakura-chan. I'm going to get us out of here."

"Yeah right," Sasuke snorted. "you can't find your way around your own damned castle dumbass."

"What did you say you bastard?"

And they were at it again. If the forest didn't kill them, they were going to kill each other.

"Well, well, well," said a voice behind her and all three of them froze. Sakura wiped her eyes and slowly turned around.

"What do we have here?" drawled the man in a sing-song voice as he walked towards the three of them, his face stretched into a smile that gave Sakura goosebumps.

"Who are you?" it was Naruto who spoke.

The man's smile widened and he leered at Naruto nastily, walking past Sakura and coming to a stop directly in front of him. "You must be Minato's brat. But I have not come for you, boy."

"Get away from us you slimy bastard," Naruto snarled in the man's face as he drew his sword and Sakura felt her stomach knot in fear. That was the exact thing you did not say and do to a person who looked like they could kill you with a single look.

The man threw his head back and laughed. "I did not come here for you boy. I already told you that," he said, and the next thing she knew, he was holding Naruto up against a tree and his sword lay where he had been standing, broken into two. The man opened his mouth and a huge, ugly snake reared its head out of it and slithered up his arm and across Naruto's shoulders until it had wrapped itself several times around both Naruto and the tree.

Sakura's breath hitched and unconsciously, she found herself backing away, eyes wide and terrified.

This was no ordinary man.

The man laughed again.

"L..let him go," Sakura found herself saying against her better judgment, a new-found bravado making her speak. Or maybe it was just stupidity. Or maybe she was more terrified of Naruto dying. The man turned his head towards her, his sickly smile still in place.

"And what are you going to do about it, girl? Should I have him swallowed whole, or would you like it if I chopped him to pieces first?" he walked towards her slowly, like a lion stalking its prey and Sakura shrunk back.

"Get away from her," growled Naruto, struggling against the snake, his eyes narrowed and anger evident in his face. "Sasuke!"

Sasuke was already moving, sword in hand, but the snake-man evaded him effortlessly. Two more snakes shot out from under his sleeves and Sasuke jumped back, only to be kicked from behind by the snake-man who moved too fast for Sakura's eyes to really register. Sasuke stumbled onto his knees a few feet away from her and she ran to his side.

"Sasuke-kun! Are you- aaaAAAAARGH!" she cut off with a scream as the man flung her away and attacked Sasuke. Sakura landed on her back and made to get up, remembering the bow and arrow in the pack that was still on her back. But when she reached for the helm of her bow, her fingers instead touched something soft and leathery, something which was creeping up under her palm and then onto the back of her shoulders. Sakura froze, suddenly finding it hard to breath.

The snake slithered over her shoulder and she watched, petrified, as its head came to view, yellow-skinned and spotted black with black slits for eyes. Then it opened its mouth and a purple tongue rolled out.

Sakura screamed.

"Sakura!" she heard Sasuke yell, but she could not concentrate on anything other than the snake in her face, ready to strike her down and swallow her whole. If she hadn't been frozen with fear, she would have cried.

As it was, the snake had better things to do than swallow her whole, for it closed its mouth soon after she screamed and instead, slithered down her body and across her abdomen, then up her back again, wrapping around her tightly. She felt its head on top of her own and screamed again, writhing against the slowly tightening hold.

She saw Sasuke rushing towards her, sword drawn, but the Snake-man kicked him back, again and again. When he tried to go towards Naruto, who had lost consciousness and was slowly turning a disturbing shade of purple around the face and hands(the only parts of him that was visible), the snake-man did the same, knocking Sasuke onto the ground and laughing.

"You can try to save them, Sasuke-kun. But you can't. You can't even defend your own sorry little self," the Snake-man said mockingly, grabbing Sasuke around the neck and yanking him up so that his feet hung several inches above the ground. "My snakes are going to squeeze the life out of them, Sasuke-kun. I could kill you too, with my bare hands. Is this what the Uchiha clan has been reduced to? A weakling infant who can't even crawl?"

Sasuke snarled and lashed out with his arms, but the Snake-man avoided him easily, almost laughing as he continued. "Is this what they have made you to be, the Golden Kingdom? Is this what they have reduced the last Uchiha to?" Then he leaned close and the next words were lost to Sakura.

Sasuke snarled again, and the man reared his head back, opening his mouth to reveal sharp fangs and then, as she watched in bewilderment, pushed Sasuke's head to a side and bit him on the neck.

"NO!" Sakura screamed, but that was all she could do.

The man let Sasuke drop to the ground, and with a swirl of dust and smoke, he disappeared. The ever-tightening pressure on her body disappeared and Sakura looked down to find herself free of the snake. She rushed toward Sasuke, who was on his knees, one arm braced against the hard ground and the other on his neck, his face twisted in agony.

"No, no, no.. Sasuke-kun," Sakura said shakily as she fell to her knees on the ground beside him. "Sasuke-kun please- please don't die."

But Sasuke was not the worst off, Sakura realized as she noticed Naruto on the ground next to the tree he had been held against, unmoving.

She remembered the horrible colouring on his face, and the slowly tightening hold of the snake around her own body. She had found it difficult to breath. How long had Naruto been held like that?

"Sasuke-kun. I'm going to check on Naruto, okay? Wait here," she told him as calmly as she could, and with shaking hands and legs, made her way to where Naruto lay, dreading the worst.

Sakura started to panic even more than she already was, but she forced herself to stop.

She had to be strong. She had to be strong for the both of them.

She turned him over and placed her hand over his nose.

His breaths were slow, but he was breathing. Sakura sighed in relief and got up, running back towards Sasuke who was now lying on the ground, his eyes screwed shut.

Sasuke was burning with fever, and when she pried his hand away from the bite, Sakura saw that three black flecks had appeared inside the area marked by teeth-marks.

Be strong, she told herself, fighting a wave of tears and panic that threatened to engulf her.

It was already past mid-afternoon, and soon, the forest would get dark. She had to find some cover before that. The last two nights, she had slept huddled between the two boys between the nook of two trees with either end of a blanket pinned to the trunks of the trees sheltering them.

Presently, she searched for a location to pin the blanket and found one a few feet away from where she was standing. After she had made the make shift shelter, she moved their belongings- or what was left of it to the area. That was the easy part.

It was hard, manual labour and she must have scratched them on rocks and twigs, but eventually, Sakura managed to drag both Naruto and Sasuke under the little canopy she'd built. She cleaned the dried blood off Sasuke's neck the best she could, and applied some salve she had taken from the castle on the bite marks. She wiped his face and arms with a wet cloth, and put another on his forehead, willing the fever to go down. She tried waking Naruto, shaking his shoulders gently, but even when she wiped his face with the damp cloth, Naruto showed no signs of waking up. Around them, the forest was gradually getting darker as dusk set in. Soon, the forest would be awake.

Sakura felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Where was Kakashi-sensei? He was supposed to protect them, to lead them to the safety of- wherever it was. He was supposed to be here, with her- them- to prevent things like this from happening.

But instead, she was alone, without any defence whatsoever should they be attacked, with her two bestfriends lying on either side of her, unconscious and dead to the world around them and possibly, in dire condition that needed to be attended to by a proper physician. Sakura sniffed and wiped her eyes, no longer able to keep the tears at bay.

This was going to be the longest night yet.