Driving the kunai hard and fast, it made its mark, causing the warm liquid to splatter across her pretty face

Driving the kunai hard and fast, it made its mark, causing the warm liquid to splatter across her pretty face. Such an innocent face to have something taint her for life…she would never feel the same.

His body made contact with the floor, but not before saying a small, almost inaudible "Thank you." He was trying to say an apology for tainting her, but she never got it because his life had been taken away…into a place he felt more happy in.

She saw the blood seep out more and more. The beautiful, crimson liquid trickle across his chest, down his body to the ground, as gravity made it look to silent and slow, as if time stopped to let you see it. It was a horrifyingly beautiful sight, indeed.

Silently, the poor little girl cried, for she had just ended a persons' life. She had done it, not for survival, but for her survivals' sake of another. Was this her true weakness?

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Holy Jesus! How come no one told me I made so many errors at the end of the last chapter?! XDD oh well…

I bet half of you are like, 'Jeez! You update NOW?! I figured you'd have update ten bill years ago!!' well if you're one of those people, I have a good excuse! DDXX If people actually read my profile here and there (which I bet no one does ; ) Then they'd know that I just finished an exam a couple of days ago! But anyways, enough of that, let's continue with this story, now shall we?

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Sakura made every step towards her goal. The pain was unbearable and excruciating but she kept on going. Each step was like coal burning your feet, like walking in hell

Her body was covered with blood. It was hard to tell how much of it was hers and how much weren't, Tear stained cheeks, sore and stiff, cuts here and there, and spasms shook her body violently, from a suffering state of chakra and blood loss. Her leg wasn't functioning properly and it hurt to just move it.

She felt like lead, each crawl, each step, each movement wracked her body and she sure felt the pain. But, she reasurred herself and reminded herself of her goal, her destination. She was needed elsewhere, not the place of her victims, soaking their blood in the ground.

Dragging herself along the floor for what seemed like hours or possibly even days, she got to a clearing.

By this time, she was panting very heavily, her body that once used to feel like lead felt now like 6 buildings into one! She wanted to heal herself, her fingers were tingling to do so, but that would waste a lot of chakra, chakra she needed to heal Gaara, she could feel it in the air. He was with a much tougher enemy.

That was her destination, Gaara.

Filled with more determination, she nearly screamed out as she pushed herself a little further.

'Why…' she thought, 'why am I being so pitiful? Saving a man who once tried to kill me, save a man who gave me the true meaning of fear, put me through so much…what did this truly mean?' She winced as her body shook again.

'Crawling so desperately to him as well, feeling the need to him to be there-safely. He meant everything to her, she would've admitted, but the question that was nagging at her was:

"Why…why does he mean so much to me?" Sakura gasped out. It hurt to talk, but in this case, she didn't even care. She just needed to voice it out. The question frustrated her beyond belief. What was going on?

Gagging, Sakura dropped to the floor and coughed out some blood. It was really a disgusting and pathetic view. She knew it herself, she had no need to hear it from someone else. Ironically she could almost hear Sasuke's voice telling her so-saying she was annoying and useless yet again.

Getting up with much difficulty, she continued on, staggering to tree to tree, leaning it on support. No matter what she did, she would always remain weak, she supposed. It seemed even if she got a little stronger, everyone else moved forward two steps more than she did. She had failed to become strong from the beginning of life. If only…if only she had trained on this when she was younger instead of flocking around Sasuke all the time. Now that she had realized her mistake, it was far too late. It was a useless cause to try now. And for all those years she truly believed she would've gotten stronger; merely a mirage.

Sakura didn't understand why these thoughts were pooling around her now, for she knew these feelings all her life, but perhaps there was a purpose. Whatever it was, she was grateful to have a distraction from the pain.

Trudging forward was both inflicting more pain and exhausting her more. And at the same time, she was getting used to this feeling. It was making her stronger and weaker at the same time; ironic.

Suddenly she was pulled from her thoughts as she heard a battle clang of metal hitting rushing against sand. The scraping sounds of each sand particle that could either glide passed or roughly scrape against the metal seemed an interesting contrast.

Sakura picked up her pace, moving along to get to where the battle was.

Her vision was a little blurry when she stopped suddenly, feeling faint, but she forced her eyes to stay glued in front of her. She couldn't fall unconscious now, not when she was so close.

Squinting at the battle didn't improve her vision much more. They were in a deep part of the forest, making them only black silhouettes attacking each other. The erupts of sand from the ground was powerful indeed. Sakura sighed mentally, 'I will never be as strong as Gaara…' but shaking her head, she cleared the thoughts. She had no time for that.

Taking a step forward, she gasped. It was like slow motion as one of the silhouettes ran up and plunged his katana straight through the other. You couldn't see the tainted colour of red, but the gasping and gagging sound of the thick liquid seeped from the wound from the back and out of his mouth as well. She didn't believe the one who got stabbed was Gaara-it couldn't be! The other man pulled out the sword and was about to plunge it in him again.

She wanted to deny the fact that the one losing wasn't Gaara, but it just wasn't possible, Gaara didn't fight with a katana, he fought with sand. Running, half staggering up to the battle, felt like her lungs were on fire. It hurt to step one step closer, hurt to breathe, hurt to scream and plea, hurt to jump right in time in front of him.

Jin, the crazed sadistic man who wanted to kill Gaara above everything else actually stopped. He eyed the woman in front of him warily. She was caked in blood, her hair was disheveled and her clothes were torn in spots and rumpled. One of her legs, the one she got injured in, was already starting to swell up, and her walking such a distance with that wound served no help with the stop of the swelling. She had cuts and scratches here and there, and she was panting heavily. Blood ran down her mouth from when she'd coughed out some blood yet he praised her quite highly. For someone to endure that much and run in front of someone to save them certainly needed a strong will. Of course he'd never voice it out, but he did seem to like how strong the woman in front of him was. Sakura, was it, from his briefing he'd read from before.

Jin lowered his katana in the slightest, but Sakura seemed much more relieved, nonetheless.

"What is it you want? You are in the way."

Sakura's once pleading eyes dissolved almost instantaneously into hardened and fierce ones.

"You will immediately move away from this area." She defiantly commanded.

"And what if I don't want to?" Jin swung the words playfully. Normally he didn't like playing with people, more or less, he liked getting straight to the point, but this situation…surprisingly was different.

Her eyes narrowed even more when he dared to playfully show his disobedience.

"That wasn't a plea, it was an order."

"My apologies miss…" Jin stopped the sentence as if trying to remember her name. Whether it was a fake pause or not, she was about to answer that it was none of his concern, but he answered before she could.

"…Haruno, that's it. Miss. Haruno."

Her eyes inquisitively looked at him suspiciously. 'Since when does this guy know my name? Do I know him?'

As if reading her mind, he answered "I know more about you than you originally had thought. Don't underestimate your opponent, like he did." Jin sneered behind her, who was Gaara, already unconscious of the ground.

Sakura sucked up her anger boiling close to the brim. She felt like ripping the man in front of her, into many shreds. How dare he talk to Gaara in such a way?' she didn't pass time by over-thinking what she had just said.

"You know nothing about me." She dangerously low, but averting the conversation to steer away from talking about Gaara.

"Oh? And who are you to decide? I probably know even more about you than you know of yourself." He said tauntingly.

Sakura had to use all of her resistance to stop from launching herself to him and beating him senseless. She knew better though, she would never win. If he beat Gaara, she wouldn't stand a chance. Also she was almost at her limit of chakra, energy, and she was exhausted.

"But fine." Jin stated after thinking a little. "I agree to leave you and this worth-less-than-crap, sorry excuse for a man, son of a-"

"Continue on with that ranting on Gaara you are doing right now, and I'll rip out your jugular…" She threatened venomously.

Jin waved his hand submissively, "Empty threat. You wouldn't even touch me before I shredded you to bits."

Jin looked back at Sakura's face and saw her expression. Priceless.

"Well, fine, I'll leave you two alone for now. I've decided that Gaara was too weak this time, and I expected him to be stronger. I'll kill him next time, after I play with him a little longer. It just seemed to easy this time."

Jin gave Sakura a once-over that made her shudder. It was really embarrassing and uncomfortable as he eyed her.

"I'll play with you too as well…." He said slyly. He wanted to gag.

He turned to walk away, but Sakura yelled for him to stop.

He turned and cocked his head to the side as if questioning her.

"What's your name?"

He smiled cockily, that made her want to roll her eyes, but she resisted.

"Jin."

Just as she thought…this monster was the one that had the other members feared of. They were even so feared that they wanted her to kill them for him. Just what was he? Certainly he wasn't human-no human could torture one so.

"Okay, Jin, I suggest you clean up your team members before the crows come." Sakura gravely said, as somewhat of a threat itself.

Jin, however, passed it off, "They were weak anyways. They deserve the crows to finish them off." And with that, he walked off.

Sakura hated that attitude-the one that would think others were below him and lowly. Just how did he think he could possibly have the right to treat others as dirt? Sakura sighed, she hated to judge people on first appearances, but he was seriously pushing the limits.

Sakura forced her attention to Gaara solely and began to do a quick check.

She grimaced, it didn't look good. The wound just barely missed an important artery and the wound was deep in width as well as length. Other than that wound, there were others, much more minor than this one, though.

Sakura wasn't sure how much of the wound she'd be able to heal, but it was worth all of the rest of her chakra, to heal it as best she could.

Taking a deep breath, she drew her chakra to her hands.

It was a tiring process, long and suffering, but she needed this to be done.

Sealing the part near the artery came first because it was the most vulnerable area. She needed it to be healed perfectly to avoid imperfections that would endanger his health in the future. Taking her job very seriously, she lost track of time, as she surveyed the damages more and more.

Growing wearier, she scoffed at it mentally. She as in no position to just continue in the morning, he needed to be healed right now….the consequences of not would be him dying.

Straight hours of work and the aftermath of the battle from previously were taking their toll on her. Even the traveling she had to do from her battle to where she was now, was time consuming and took more out of her than she had originally thought. This wasn't looking very good.

Grimacing, she continued to forcefully push chakra out. Exerting it now, was much more painful. Her vision was much more blurry. At one moment, she nearly passed out, but quickly caught herself before she was unconscious.

She hadn't felt so tired in her whole life, yet…she hadn't felt so good in all her life either.

At this picture, a normal person might've suggested her being masochistic; however, this pain wasn't giving her happiness. It was of how proud she felt. For once in her life, she was fighting for all she was worth. She didn't care if the outcome of her bodies' health would be bad in the end, if she could die from this. She just wanted to do something right. For this one time, she held no hesitation. She knew this was right and she also knew that she didn't fear death at this moment. It was the least of her worries. Was this the feeling of bravery? It felt nice…

Her vision was blackening and she felt her head swaying from left to right, nearly colliding with the ground, if she hadn't stopped her fall just in time her hands.

Shit…I can't be out yet…

He was almost healed, she couldn't back down yet. Getting up by kneeling in front of him, yet again, she took a deep breath.

Sakura finally realized that her body would shut down automatically if she kept a steady pace, using her chakra. She would need to use it all at once, so her body wouldn't have a chance to cave in too early.

Sakura also knew that this was dangerous and perhaps this would be the end of her ever living again. She was surprised with herself that it didn't bother her that much. She didn't mind.

Forcing the chakra to be only at her hands, she saw it encircling. Watching the light in fascination; she had never seen such an enormous gathering of chakra from herself ever before.

Forcing it all out in mere seconds into Gaara's whole form was quick. The pain in her heart hurt almost unbearably though. It seemed to be an effect of warning that you were out of chakra before you passed out.

She landed subtly on Gaara.

'Crap, I messed up the ending…' she thought, while sighing mentally. 'I'm not supposed to end ON the patient.'

Smiling faintly, she finally felt good about herself. The rest was to Gaara, on healing. She was certain, however, that Gaara would live. He had a strong will to, and he was strong mentally and physically as well.

Sakura let the darkness consume her, as she felt her body shut down, but she had a smile on her lips as she left.

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