AN: I'm a horrible little angst fairy spreading my fairy dust of angst all over the Kishimoto world. It's absolutely terrible. Poor Naruto! Alas. But seriously, I haven't had this much fun writing a fight scene in quite some time. Enjoy?
She led Naruto down to his rooms, still irritated.
"You sure you don't want to stay?" He murmured against her ear as he drew her into his arms.
"N-Naruto!" She swatted his head.
"Ow-" He muttered. "We're Guests, here." She practically snarled, fangs bared.
"I was just kidding, Yeesh." He said rubbing his head.
"You never know, you did have Jiraiya as your sensei" Sakura explained.
"You had Kakashi sensei too, and let's face it, Tsunade Baa-chan is a gambling lush." He countered.
She grinned and kissed him. "We both have had lecherous, drunk and gambling sensei's"
"And we've managed to turn out so well" He grinned. "You're not a gambling lush, and I'm a one girl kinda guy… in a committed relationship, no less"
"Good night, baka" Sakura smiled against his lips.
"Sleep well, Sakura chan" He said with a grin.
Sakura made her way down the hall, kunai still unsheathed as she searched for his chakra. As if he would be that careless if he was even here, but it was worth trying. Her frown darkened as she slowly opened the door to her room, eyes darting in the darkness. She hated her lack of movement in the constricting kimono. She entered and flipped on the light switch, eying the room.
Pleased that no one was there, she changed quickly into her usual vest and skirt with shorts get up. These rooms were really too grand. On top of having a master bedroom with a luxurious futon, she had her own bathroom complete with bathtub and a little mini living room and kitchenette. She sat down in her mini living room, kindling the fireplace and picking up a book as she sat in the chair provided.
She heard the rustle sometime later, and kunai launched at the intruder.
"I knew it was you" She said, book gone, and up, as she had two more fists full of kunai between each of her fingers she glared at the raven haired Uchiha.
Sasuke scowled, as he held the kunai she'd launched at him. "You're lucky I had the Sharingan activated."
"No, you're lucky" She replied vehemently.
"I couldn't stay away" He said simply. He wasn't sorry for that.
Sakura rolled her eyes.
"Changed out of your kimono" He stated, saying something to fill the space.
"We received a warning from the Hiashi to return to the house. Apparently there was a breech in security" She glared.
"Oh." He replied.
"What are you doing here?" Sakura asked, exasperated.
"I wanted to know…what you said" He said hesitantly.
She paused and sighed clenching her fist as she closed her eyes. "I told him…"
"…Yes?" He said.
"I told him I loved you." She said softly. His ears didn't miss it.
His calloused hands were underneath her chin, looking into her eyes. He suspected falsehood, but her eyes gleamed the truth, her cheeks flushed. Her lips parted for her tongue as she licked her lips and Sasuke was done. Abruptly his lips were on hers, burying his fingers in her hair, pressing her against him. Sakura was startled and nearly fell. His hands steadied her in the midst of their kiss as it became feral, wild and they stumbled. Sakura was lost in his kiss, his touch and he bore her down to the floor, laying her down on the futon before she registered it. His hands dived beneath her vest, those sword calloused hands on her flesh. Sakura gasped at his touch, hating herself for loving every treacherous minute of it.
"Sakura" He murmured against the tender flesh at her neck. Sky blue eyes…
"Please" she pleaded. "Stop this" She begged against his lips as her tears fell.
He kissed her senseless and she couldn't help but tangle her hands in his hair, kissing him back while fighting the moan.
"Sasuke kun" She pleaded, though for him to stop or to continue he wasn't sure.
Sasuke saw her tears, felt them and sighed, in remorse, broke their kiss, leaving them both trembling.
"Damn it." She sniffled.
"I know" He muttered, raking a hand through his bangs. "I love you…and I'm sorry" He stated.
"I know" She replied, hugging her knees as she hung her head in shame.
"No. You don't." He replied with feeling.
"I've never felt this way before. Not even while I killed my brother did I ever feel this…this rage." Sasuke said, eyes blaring red.
Sakura's eyes widened in terror and he realized his mistake
"Shit! Just..listen to me, Okay? Please…I feel…I feel this Indignation about you and him…this injustice. I can barely control myself around you, Sakura. Seeing you with him kills me." He said, obviously pained as he expressed it to her, trembling as he did so. He swallowed, painfully.
"I'm not doing this because I want to ruin our team. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt him. But I can't be around you two any longer. I can't stand it." He gasped, fist shaking as he clenched it.
"Why?" She murmured, eyes widening as she took in every word and action that played across his face.
Had he ever been so vulnerable and fragile? So open and bared and unguarded with her before? Never had she seen him like this, and her heart responded to his sincerity, gleaming in her eyes. Sakura had always been very very bad at holding grudges. Sasuke was no exception.
"Because every time you kiss him, every time you touch him, when he puts his hands around your waist and holds you close…I think that I want to kill him." He practically snarled in heated whispered fury.
Then red eyes broke and cracked and he took his face in his hands.
"But he's my best friend. I could never do that to him. And I wonder what kind of a monster I am for wanting to steal his happiness, the only happiness he's ever known. He never gave up on me all of those years. And I know those thoughts are completely and utterly irrational. I would give everything I have for him and I know he would do the same. But even knowing all of that…I can't help it, I can't control this."
"This?" She murmured dazedly, as she stared at him.
"This." He said kissing her hard as he pinned her to the futon, trying to show her what he lacked with the ability to put in words. He broke off their kiss again as he leaned his forehead against hers.
"Gods Sakura…I want to rip his arm off for touching you…for touching what was mine, what should have been mine. You should have been mine, Sakura. And I can't help it. I'm so jealous I can barely stand it" He said kissing her with the desperation of a drowning man.
Sakura's body responded to the heat, the earnestness, the sheer desperation he had in approaching her. He was being painfully soul bearing-ly honest with her.
"Please say something" He begged, pleaded as he kissed her.
"What do you want me to say?" She trembled.
"Tell me you love me. Tell me something, anything-" He pleaded.
"I love you" She said, green eyes meeting his in her own moment of utter honesty as they broke and cracked. And he felt sick all over again from being the cause of such pain.
She paused on the words, swallowing. "But I can't do this Sasuke. I-I love him. I won't do this to him"
"You love me too" He prompted eyes darkening as he fought to hide the hurt and bitterness.
"I do" she confessed. "But not like this, Sasuke. It's not fair what you're asking me to do. And I can't do this to him" She replied.
And Sasuke swallowed, looking up with bright sharingan eyes.
"Then I will tell him." Sasuke said with a resigned sigh, as he sat up.
"W-what?" Sakura asked startled.
"You want him to know. You couldn't do it, and it wasn't…I shouldn't have left it to you. That wasn't right. It isn't your place to tell him. It was my fault. I will tell him and we will deal with things… as they come." Sasuke said, determined.
"When?" she murmured, shocked.
"Tomorrow morning. We're meeting to spar." He said.
"A-alright. We all need to talk about this." She said.
"We will. I love you." He told her fervently, kissing her again.
"I know. Gods, this is so scary. But I think I love you too" She trembled, kissing him with abandon.
"I should go." He said huskily, red eyes gleaming at her.
She nodded. Sasuke disappeared out of the Hyuuga residence just as silently and stealthily as he had come and Sakura went to bed to try and sleep but sleep wouldn't come. Instead she envisioned sharingan red eyes and the feel of his lips.
They both missed the flash of stormy blue eyes and the quiver of unruly kempt hair and whiskered cheeks as it shook with fury. He padded silently back down the hallway of the Hyuuga compound to his guest room.
……………………………………………….
Dark clouds threatened overhead as Sasuke walked to the training grounds. The Uchiha prodigy stretched his shoulder which was tender from his 'spar' with Sakura the other day. He shouldn't have been surprised at her skill. There was a good reason she was an anbu captain, after all. One couldn't make Anbu simply off of being easily trusted. But he had also severely underestimated her. It seemed she had been holding back for a while now and yesterday had been a sure sign of her improvement. She had been hiding it from him.
Sasuke sighed and saw him sitting there on the rubble from Sakura's blow to the training ground. He flipped a kunai upwards and back, catching it as he waited. Apparently Yamato hadn't been around to fix it yet. It didn't matter.
"Dobe" Sasuke greeted and was shocked to flip backwards as the kunai Naruto had been flipping hit the ground where his foot had been only a moment ago.
"Pick up the kunai, Sasuke-Teme. You're going to need it" Naruto's eyes were narrowed, and red, thin black slits for pupils glaring at him in open hatred as the air began to heat, his red chakra flaming out.
Sasuke tensed. "I didn't come here to fight" He said, bringing his hands up, and forward in visible sight.
"I told you to pick up the kunai" Naruto snarled. And the air exploded. Sasuke's Sharingan eyes took in the sight of over five hundred clones surrounding him.
"Naruto" He said, eyes narrowing. "What is this?" He said eyes darting to the clones around him.
"You know *exactly* what this is Teme." Naruto eyes narrowed. "I TRUSTED YOU!" The clones resounding echo snarled out, forced Sasuke to cover his ears.
"Naruto, you need to calm down. Let's talk about this" Sasuke tensed.
"I HEARD you talk last night" He snarled, as he launched his offensive.
Sasuke unsheathed twin katana and he lanced chidori through the blades making a sweeping motion at the first lines of clones dashing at him. He jumped through the air, narrowly avoiding Naruto's clones wave of weaponry, landing on the balls of his feet as he prepared his next move, crouching.
Sharingan eyes widened as he felt the Rasengan before he saw it, and launched a volley of senbon at the clones preparing it, dissipating them before they could complete the chakra. They vanished with ninja smoke, dissipating as he dodged the various clones attacking him.
He danced a deadly set of taijutsu, katana flashing and arching as the clones poofed out of existence from his slices. He made short work of the clones that tried to approach him but couldn't avoid so many, not when it came to the Kyuubi Vessel who was on par with him. He caught the left side of the punch, grazing the cheek Sakura had hit him, and went tumbling through several rows of clones, dissipating as others leapt to the offensive.
"Aaaaughhhh!" Sasuke cried, anger coursing through him at the frustration of the situation, Katon-ing the area with fire, as he rid himself of the fifty pursuing clones.
"Stop this, Naruto!" Sasuke cried, panting as he held his katana in a defensive crouch as he wiped the blood from his chin.
His tomoe whirled as they looked upon his best friend, hating this, hating what they had become.
"WHY?!" He snarled, his voice booming across the field as the Kyuubi chakra ignited the very air around him, dissipating the rest of the surrounding clones in his fury.
Sasuke winced at the sheer electric charge of the air around him. The concrete training field began to melt beneath the massive density of his chakra as he glowered ethereally red. Shit.
"Naruto, if you don't control your anger, you're going to kill Some One!" Sasuke shouted in anguish.
"ANSWER ME!" His eyes had lost all traces of his best friend, glowing red, as he saw the elongated ears. Shit.
The Kyuubi was coming out of him, leaking in the waves of crimson over his best friends head and body.
"Damn it, Naruto!" Sasuke strangled out, as he pressed forward, katana flashing with Chidori as he threw it at his best friend.
Naruto's snarl resounded and reverbated, causing Sasuke to flinch. The Kyuubi vessel knocked Chidori aside with a clawed hand and it exploded to the left of them. Sasuke cursed, as he leapt back, the ground too hot to stand there any longer. Naruto's skin hissed, burning as he grew another tail. Sasuke's eyes widened. His best friend was in a crouch, three tails waving above him.
"NARUTO!" Sasuke cried.
He had to get him to listen to him, to stop this madness before he killed someone, or worse got himself killed.
"GUUOOOOOAAAAHHHHHHH" The gut wrenching snarl ripped from Naruto's mouth as he saw the fangs growing in his best friend's mouth.
The fox bearer launched forward and Sasuke leapt forward, determined. He would stop this. He had to stop this. He would save his best friend.
Sasuke threw the Katana lined with chidori blasts as he summoned the oversized shuriken from his wrists. He threw it forward with his rain of senbon. Naruto dodged and spun mid air as he spit a beam of chakra at him straight from his tails and mouth. Sasuke's eyes widened and he braced himself, for to dodge it would surely kill whatever unsuspecting idiot was in it's path behind him.
Sasuke flew through the air, miraculously taking the majority of, and also avoiding the explosion that rocked the ground beneath him from the godlike force of the blow. The Kyuubi container launched forward.
Sasuke took the rain of punches as he cried out, Naruto's skin burning him as he hit. Sasuke grabbed his friend, wincing with pain from the burns along his hands and threw him down to the ground, pushing off his back, as he summoned his Katon Gour Yuuka no jutsu. The giant fire head flew towards the Kyuubi vessel and Naruto met it head on, getting rocketed back, crashing to the floor as he dealt with it. While Sasuke gasped, his body trembling from exertion. He felt the sky crackle above him as he fell, and the rain came. He half smiled as he felt the rain drip on his opened wounds. It would work. It had to.
It hadn't taken long for Naruto to fight off the Katon jutsu, though the Kyuubi vessel bore black across his slowly changing mahogany maroon skin from the burns.
"KIRIN!" Sasuke cried, the thunder crackling as the thunder crashed on the unsuspecting Kyuubi.
Naruto's cry of agony came and the Kyuubi vessel plummeted to the ground, exploding the very court they had been fighting on…or what had been left of it.
Sasuke landed, forming a small crater as he gasped, pain coursing through his entire body, the burns as he headed towards his friend who lay unconscious at his feet. He bent down to check his vitals and Sasuke felt the punch, launching him flying into the concrete, breaking it as he formed another crater. Naruto had used a clone and tunneled beneath the ground. He was on him punching and kicking too fast for the Uchiha prodigy to block with his extensive wounds. Sasuke choked on the blood, spewing from his mouth as Naruto held him by his throat.
"Aah.." Sasuke winced, eye swollen shut as his other sharingan glared at his best friend, blood dribbling down his chin as his hands tried to force Naruto's off his neck. A tremor passed through his body.
"You used too many high leveled jutsu, Sasuke. Your chakra tunnels are recoiling with the amount of power you've channeled through you, aren't they?"
Sasuke hacked up more blood, trying to catch his breath as he wheezed, hanging from his best friends grip.
"Shall we end this, Teme?" Naruto snarled, hand gripping his throat tighter as Sasuke choked.
"NARUTO!" Sakura's chakra infused punch, sent him flying, and broke his hold on Sasuke who hit the floor, as Sakura crouched over him.
"What the HELL do you think you're doing?!" Sakura's tear filled cry made him flinch, until he felt the hurt turn to anger.
"What do you mean what the HELL am I doing? How could you…." He said, hanging his head as he the tears spilled.
"How COULD YOU, SAKURA?" He cried, tears pouring from his eyes as he looked from Sakura to Sasuke, fists clenched as he glared at the Sharingan bearer who was trying to stand.
Sakura felt the blow like a physical hit…from his lack of Chan at the ending of her name. Fist clenched as her eyes hardened. She bore the look of broken stormy blue depths as she felt her own tears, trembling.
Sakura choked. "I tried to tell you." She said hanging her head in shame.
"You wouldn't listen to me. You were the one who told me it didn't matter" Sakura snapped, fire burning in those jade eyes.
"I thought it was in the past. I didn't think you were cheating on me with HIM as we spoke. I didn't think you were capable of it." Naruto gasped, tears raining.
"Damn it, Naruto. I didn't seek this out" Sakura told him.
"It was my fault, Naruto…leave Sakura out of this…this is between you and me" Sasuke stated, rising to his feet as he teetered.
"The hell it is" Sakura snarled, turning on Sasuke and glaring at the both of them as she stood between them.
It was then that Sakura realized they had an audience, a host of anbu members surrounding them with a whole flight of medics, putting out the fires surrounding them with water jutsu and healing those who had gotten caught in the crossfire of their rather exponentially large chakra battle.
And she felt the look of sorrowful but resigned hazel eyes as her Shishou appeared. Tsunade landed, eyebrows drawn, as she looked at team seven. Kakashi was next to her, as was Sai and Sakura felt the tears blur her vision.
"How dare you. Both of you." Sakura strangled out.
"Idiots!" She snarled, jade blazing at them. "Are you happy now? You practically leveled Konoha in your fight!" She shook from her rage.
"You could have killed someone using jutsu of that level…. on each other." She spluttered and they winced, chastised more effectively than any injury or torture could. Both felt the tears in their eyes from her fury, from her pain.
"You injured people." She screamed at them.
Both flinched as she used both fists dragging them by their collars to her face.
"Damn it, I loved you both. How could you destroy what we love?..... over WHAT? A relationship? How petty. How pathetic!" Sakura threw them to the ground and stormed off.
"Sakura-Wait!" Both tried to go after her, and both felt the swift justice of her punch send them flying into the trees.
She flash stepped so that she was standing over them.
"I will not be the reason you destroy the Konoha that I love, SHANNARO! I quit. Here and now" Sakura strangled out, tears blinding her, as she turned and walked towards Tsunade.
"Shit…Sakura..Chan don't-" Naruto cried, trying to reach out to her.
"Sakura…please…"Sasuke pleaded.
"No MORE! No LONGER!" She snarled back, as she sobbed, breaking into a sprint as she ran past Tsunade and Kakashi.
Tsunade bowed her head. Kakashi's eye drooped. The surrounding area that had been blown to bits by team sevens fight; that fight was catastrophic. But the impact of Sakura quitting team seven reverberated, shaking and shocking the foundations of the anbu members and other nin present.