A/N: Hey everyone, sorry for the late update and for the short length of this chapter, but I didn't want to leave you without an update at all. I promise the next one will be longer! And of course, thank you so much to the favouriters, followers, and reviewers! You guys are da bomb :)
A quick rap of two fingers on her door startled Sakura into alertness. Her head snapped up and she scrambled off the floor, grabbing a robe and slipping it around herself just as she reached the door. She came to a halt in front of it and took a deep breath. You are such an annoyance.
You're right, she thought, a chilling sense of calm acceptance washed over her. But I won't give up on you. I never have, and I won't start now.
The door opened with a click to reveal Sasuke's figure clad in his training gear and a slight lift in his eyebrow that suggested he was…surprised.
"Were you sleeping?" he asked as if this were the most confounding question of all time.
Sakura let go of the doorknob and went to the window to shut it. The cold breeze was making her knees shake, but then, maybe it had nothing to do with the cold breeze, and everything to do with the dark-haired boy in her doorway. "Of course I was. What else would you expect I'd be doing at this hour?"
Sasuke remained just outside the door, gauging the space inside as if he were physically incapable of crossing the line where her door shut. He stared at her skeptically and then his expression shifted to one of seriousness. A mask of indifference and nonchalance. She wondered how he had mastered that expression so well. She would have thought the tragedies of his past would make more susceptible to emotion and sympathy, especially towards someone like Naruto who had no parents and lived his childhood without someone's love.
But Sasuke's tragedies hardened him, and made him cold inside. Everything that had once carried love was now frozen over with hate. A burning hate that would not dissipate.
But this fire couldn't simply be put out. It needed to be transformed—rather than a raging storm, it needed to be cultivated into an ember—into a beacon of light for Sasuke to finally see by.
She hoped she had the power to make that change in him.
"I need to train," he said bluntly.
Sakura nodded. "So, what do you want me to do about that? You seemed perfectly fine with going this morning without me."
Sasuke took a quick look around the room—at her tangled sheets and open bathroom door with water sloshed on the counter—and then he looked at her directly. "Fine. You can continue to combat your nightmares here if you'd like then. I'll be outside training."
And with not so much as another glance in her direction he was gone. Sakura sighed, sagging to sit on her bed. She had no energy left in her, but the indifference in his expression infuriated her. If he didn't care whether she came, why was he asking?
She shrugged off her thoughts and grabbed a fresh set of tights and the now-washed shirt she'd trained in the night before, along with a sweater for the cold, threw them on, and jogged out of the house in order to catch up to him.
Sasuke didn't say a word as she walked into the training field, her steps cautious as she noticed he was training with a katana instead of a dummy that night.
He moved with the grace of a lithe animal—feral but calculative and agile in his movements. He attacked the air in front of him with precise power and an intense glare. Sakura watched as the muscles in his arms and back rolled and pulled taut with each of his strikes. He had shorn off his cloak just as he had the night before, leaving his arms bare in the night breeze, leaving Sakura again with the impression that this Sasuke was very different than the one she'd known in Team 7. He was stronger now, which is something he had always desired, but she wondered: What cost had this strength come at?
Wanting to feel the breeze on her skin as well, Sakura let her sweater slip off her shoulders and threw it on the dummy she had practiced on the night before. She passed alongside the wooden stand of weapons and picked up a lightweight katana and swung it into her right hand. She let the blade settle between the base of her thumb and in the centre of her palm, gripping it tight.
Sasuke did not pay her any attention as she walked onto the dais he was sparring on, until she appeared directly in his way, standing behind him just as he whirled around for a stab. The blade stopped mid-air right in front of her heart, in the same place he had stabbed her in the dream.
Funny, how dreams and reality seemed to converge when it came to Sasuke.
"Get out of my way," he practically growled, obviously surprised by the way she had put herself in danger. His brow wore a crease the Sakura wanted to smooth out with her touch.
"Teach me how to use this," she declared. She threw the handle of the sword back and forth between her hands and said, "I've never been much of a sword-wielder and you seem to know quite a lot. Did Orochimaru teach you how to use a katana like that? You couldn't have learned it here with Kakashi."
She said this all with a curious nonchalance, but Sasuke's expression darkened indefinitely at the mention of his old mentor. His old evil mentor.
He lowered his katana, letting the tip drop to the floor and notch into the wood. He leaned on it as he glared at her. "Haven't you had enough of this whole me-teaching-you thing?"
Sakura shook her head. "If I'm going to lose sleep to watch over your arm while you train, then you can do me the small indulgence of allowing me to do something useful. Besides, you can't train against a dummy or against the breeze each night, now can you? You're going to need a sparring partner eventually, and I hardly think anyone in the village would do you the service."
She waited, gauging his expression as it flickered from anger, annoyance, exasperation, and finally to bitter acceptance. "Fine, hold up your sword."
Sakura smiled despite herself and held up the sword in a threatening pose, glaring in the distance at what she imagined to be Sasuke's face as the real Sasuke circled around her, observing her stance. The feeling of his eyes on her was enough to bring blood rushing to her cheeks and lightness to her stomach, but it was a hollow sort of nervousness. She knew he appraised her not as a woman he could ever be attracted to, but as if she were a piece of meat to be examined.
She was jarred out her thought when Sasuke brought his feet slamming against her ankles like he had the previous night. "Your stance is too wide. You'll blow over with the breeze like that."
Sakura shuffled, repressing the urge to nurse her wounded ankles, she noticed Sasuke was still making a face. "What else is wrong?" she asked, self-consciously.
"Everything," he said.
The word was a blow. She knew he'd said it in regards to her stance, but if felt to her as if that one word described everything about her. Everything about you is wrong.
She wondered if Sasuke knew the impact his words had on her. How many times had he brushed her off like a pest with unkind words as these? How many times had she just come right back to him? The ever adoring fan. His words hurt. But they had never stopped her.
Maybe she was a masochist who enjoyed being tortured by him.
But then again, maybe he was a sadist who enjoyed hurting her.
"Your arms are too loose," he said, stepping in front of her and grabbing her by the forearms, forcing them to flex into a tighter brace for the blade. "Straighten you back." He barked the order as he arrived by her side, and with a quick motion, took her chin into his hand with a sharp grip. In that brief moment she was barely inches from him, close enough to see the moonlight diffuse in his eyes. Light swallowed into dark. How many times would she get lost in those eyes before she learned her lesson?
"You're more likely to fight opponents taller than you. Aim your gaze higher," he said, and for a second his voice sounded tense, but he let go of her immediately after and Sakura shook her head, convinced it was a trick of her mind.
He made her put down the sword and stand normally, to once again take up the proper stance on command. She didn't get it perfect the first few times, her were shoulders too slouched, or her elbows were jutting out too much, Sasuke was never satisfied. She got lucky on the eleven try, or maybe Sasuke was tired of watching her fail over and over, but he took up stance beside her, ready to move on.
He didn't praise her for getting it right this time. No 'good job' or acknowledgement except moving onto the next stage of training her. But then again, what more did she expect from him?
He mirrored her pose, and then demonstrated three simple strikes forward. She copied him with careful focus, and was relieved when he didn't scold her or criticize her, but merely continued with the next move.
The rigorous routine continued for the next hour or so, as he led her through move after move, making her perform them over and over until she got them right—or to his very-high standards. Soon she was able to follow a very simple set of moves used when engaging an opponent.
They hadn't spoken much in that time, except for Sasuke's occasional barking orders. She gritted her teeth and refused to whine or ask for a break despite the knot forming in her back and the tenseness of her shoulders.
When Sakura was sure she'd fall over from exhaustion, Sasuke slashed to his left, and then pivoted to stand in front of her. She did the same, copying him as she had been this whole time, but did not turn around. He raised his katana level with her heart. "Try the set on me."
Sakura's eyes widened. "You want me to attack you?"
"What, scared?" he taunted, but the jest didn't play on his face. He looked almost bored.
Sakura's blood boiled. Fine, she thought. If he wants a fight, he'd get one.
She raised her blade with renewed energy and a bucket load of emotions forged into her gaze, all driven by rage.
She didn't wait for his signal to start, and swung fiercely at him, taking what he taught her and using it against him. The moment she struck, he flicked her sword aside with the side of his own, as if it were a limp ramen noodle, and span around her until he took up stance behind her. She'd barely gotten past the first move of the set before he'd made all of it useless. She needed her opponent in front of her for it to work.
"Your enemies will never let you do things the way you planned. You have to learn to adapt," he lectured.
She whirled around, swinging her sword with the intent to slash across his shoulder. He caught her sword against his own, pushing against it with the sheer force of his strength. She struggled to hold against his push, inevitably stumbling back under the pressure. He let go, and brought a strike down on her head, in a manoeuver based only on instinct, she lifted her katana at the last second to block his blow.
He pressed on her again, threatening to crush her under his blade. She held firm, but knew she wouldn't last much longer.
"Why don't you give up?" he asked. "I've got you on your knees."
He was right, she was breaking under his strength, one of her knees was sinking to the ground. His words sent her blood rushing in her ears, blocking all the sounds of nature around them on this moonlit night.
In a desperate attempt, she stopped holding up against him and ducked under his blade as it barely missed her shoulder, catching a slice of her pink hair. The strands fell like feathers to the ground, holding a shred of Sasuke's attention He obviously hadn't expected her move. She was weak and pathetic in his eyes.
With this sudden advantage, she slashed at his right arm, but Sasuke quick as ever, span to catch the blow at the last moment. "Clever," he mused, "but not clever enough." Before she realized what he was doing, he notched the tip of his sword on the hilt of her hers, forcing it out of her hand, disarming her. Sakura despised the loud clatter of her blade on the ground even more than the feeling of his sword on her neck, displaying victory.
He stared at her in this position for what seemed like eternity, and she refused to let her gaze fall to her feet like she wanted to. She held his cold, black eyes panting hard as she lifted a chakra filled finger to brush the tip of his sword away from her neck. Sasuke let the katana fall to the ground with hers.
"I think I've had enough tonight," she said, suddenly feeling the tiredness in her limbs and the defeated feeling in her heart. She walked away from him and headed toward the house.
He didn't say anything, but he appeared next to her instantly, walking in step with her. His hands flanked his sides and his hair shadowed his face so that she couldn't see his eyes when he said, "Same time tomorrow."
Sakura rolled her eyes, but she stopped in her tracks when he spoke again.
"Next time," he began, lifting his head, "I won't be surprised."
Maybe it was the fact that it was late at night, or that the moonlight liked transform Sasuke's face in infinite ways, but for a moment—she could've sworn she saw a smirk on that god damn stone face of his.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed that short chapter, promise the next one will be longer! Also, I would really appreciate hearing you thoughts, comments, constructive criticism, and more in a review! So pretty pleeeease review! :)